Do I have to accept Section 8 vouchers on my rental in Texas?

What the Texas Preemption Statute Actually Says

In 2015 the Legislature added Sec. 250.007 to the Local Government Code. A municipality or county may not adopt or enforce an ordinance or regulation that prohibits an owner, lessee, sublessee, assignee, managing agent, or other person with the right to lease a housing accommodation from refusing to lease or rent to a person because the person's lawful source of income to pay rent includes funding from a federal housing assistance program (Sec. 250.007(a)). The statute is about what local governments can require, not about what a landlord should do. A Fort Worth or Tarrant County source-of-income ordinance covering vouchers cannot be enforced against a private landlord in Texas. That is the whole reach of the section, and it reaches only local ordinances: a rental financed with federal low-income housing tax credits is separately bound, by the recorded agreement the credit requires, not to refuse a voucher holder because of that status (26 U.S.C. Sec. 42(h)(6)(B)(iv)). Conventional single-family rentals are not tax-credit properties, and this page is written for them.

The Two Carve-Outs

The section does not affect an ordinance that prohibits refusing to rent to a military veteran because of the veteran's lawful source of income (Sec. 250.007(b)). Where a city has such an ordinance, it stands. And the section does not affect a city's or county's authority to create incentives, contract commitments, density bonuses, or other voluntary programs designed to encourage acceptance of a federally funded housing voucher, including a Housing Choice Voucher (Sec. 250.007(c)). The voluntary-program language is the part that shows up in practice: a local housing authority can offer signing incentives, damage funds, or expedited inspections to landlords who participate, and nothing in the statute stops that.

What the Fair Housing Act Still Covers

A person may not refuse to rent, refuse to negotiate, or otherwise make a dwelling unavailable because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin, and may not discriminate in the terms, conditions, privileges, services, or facilities of a rental on those grounds (Prop. Code Sec. 301.021(a), (b)). Disability has its own substantive section, covering the renter, anyone who will live in the dwelling, and anyone associated with the renter (Sec. 301.025(a), (b)). Source of income does not appear anywhere in the chapter. The statute carries one explicit exception: it does not prohibit discrimination against a person convicted under federal or state law of the illegal manufacture or distribution of a controlled substance (Sec. 301.021(c)). Everything else in a screening decision has to be defensible as a business standard applied to everyone.

Where Source of Income Meets Disparate Impact

The federal Fair Housing Act reaches policies that are neutral on their face but fall disproportionately on a protected class without a legitimate justification, and voucher holders as a group are not evenly distributed across race, disability, and familial status. That is why the answer to this page's question is a description of the law, not a policy recommendation. A landlord who declines vouchers as a category is inside Sec. 250.007 as far as Texas is concerned and is relying on the absence of a federal or state source-of-income protection; a landlord whose criteria treat voucher income the same as any other verified income and screen every applicant on the same published standard is relying on consistency, which is the stronger position in every dispute we have seen described. This is exactly the kind of policy an attorney should read before it is written down, and it should be written down.

How a Voucher Actually Works With a Lease

A Housing Choice Voucher is a federal program administered by a local public housing authority. The tenant applies and screens under the landlord's published criteria, with one arithmetic point that decides most disputes: an income-to-rent ratio applied to the full contract rent instead of the tenant's share of it will reject nearly every voucher holder and reads as a pretext, so a consistent standard applies the ratio to the portion the tenant actually pays; the housing authority inspects the unit, approves the rent against its payment standard, and pays its share directly to the landlord under a housing assistance payments contract, with the tenant paying the balance. The lease is still the landlord's lease with the tenant, with a required tenancy addendum from the authority. The practical differences landlords notice are the inspection before move-in, the rent-reasonableness review, and the direct-deposit share; the screening, the deposit, the move-in report, and the maintenance duties are the same house and the same law. Payment standards and inspection rules are the housing authority's and change; we do not publish them here.

Where We Stand

Our tenant selection criteria are published, handed to every applicant with the application, acknowledged by signature before any fee is taken, and applied the same way to every applicant, which is the requirement Prop. Code Sec. 92.3515 puts on the criteria and the consistency the Fair Housing Act rewards. That consistency, not a stance on a program, is what we would tell any owner to write into their own criteria. The classes in Sec. 301.021 are never a factor in a decision we make, and neither is anything that stands in for them.