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“Sorry, we just rented our last two-bedroom apartment.”
“We don’t let families with kids live on the second floor.”
“Our condo association rules say no animals allowed, even if you have a disability.”
“We don’t accept Section 8.”
Illegal housing discrimination is still common throughout Wisconsin. Combined with scarce affordable housing, discrimination makes life much, much tougher for many housing consumers.
This is not the time to weaken the fight against discrimination, yet that is exactly what our federal government is doing: The president’s proposed budget for 2026 eliminates the Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP), a competitive grant-making program operated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
FHIP dollars support services that enforce fair housing laws and hold businesses accountable for discriminating based on race, disability, national origin, and other legally protected characteristics.
Use your voice
We call on Congress to fund FHIP, and we ask concerned members of the community to do the same. The time to speak up is now.
The Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council has applied for and received FHIP funding for many years. FHIP funds have enabled us to conduct fair housing services across the entire state, help thousands of victims of illegal housing discrimination, and educate housing consumers about fair housing rights.
Without FHIP dollars, this will end.
One of the key activities that we conduct with federal funds are investigations of discrimination, often using a method called testing. Testing is a covert method used to gather evidence that may be used in legal proceedings.
It is a controlled way to assess how housing consumers are treated in order to determine whether a housing provider is acting in compliance with fair housing laws. For example, testing permits us to compare if similarly qualified testers of different races are offered the same opportunities to rent an apartment, buy a home, or obtain homeowners insurance. Testing is an extremely effective tool for fighting illegal discrimination.
We are the only organization in Wisconsin that conducts investigations using testing; without FHIP dollars, our ability to do so will be nearly eliminated.
Why what we do is important
In some cases, we conduct investigations in response to a complaint filed by a housing consumer. In other instances, we can investigate proactively. For example, we conducted a testing investigation into a Dane County property management company’s practices, and found that it had a policy of not permitting more than five people in a three-bedroom apartment.
This overly restrictive occupancy limit can have the effect of discriminating against a household with two adults and four children, thereby violating fair housing laws. We brought a complaint against the management company, and they agreed to change their policy – making over 3,500 apartments available to larger families!
In another example of a FHIP-funded investigation, we assessed housing owned by banks and other financial institutions after foreclosures ravaged metropolitan Milwaukee from 2007 to 2010. We found that many banks maintained and marketed their foreclosed homes in white neighborhoods well, while they allowed the homes they owned in predominantly Black and Latinx neighborhoods to fall into terrible disrepair.
Banks’ poorly maintained homes in Black and Latinx communities were not just eyesores – they depressed the property values of nearby homes, they posed dangers to neighborhood children, and they became magnets for criminal activity. The differences in foreclosed homes in white versus minority communities reinforced the fact that our region has two separate housing markets, making our segregated housing patterns more entrenched and unequal than ever.
In partnership with fair housing groups elsewhere in the country, the Fair Housing Council filed lawsuits against Fannie Mae, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Deutsche Bank. Lawsuits against Fannie Mae and Wells Fargo have settled, and we have used funds from those settlements to reinvest in the communities that were harmed.
Specifically, we were the first funder of the Reclaiming our Neighborhoods (RON) Coalition. RON is a highly effective group of 10 neighborhood partner organizations that work alongside City of Milwaukee and local housing agencies to improve the quality of housing in Milwaukee. Without funds from FHIP, the initial investigations that made RON’s outstanding work possible would never have happened.
FHIP-funded organizations like the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council handle 75% of all housing discrimination complaints filed every year. Without FHIP funds, housing discrimination across the nation will go unchecked, businesses who violate civil rights laws will not be held accountable, and consumers will have their housing choices limited unfairly.
A freedom for some. But not for all.
We all deserve the freedom to choose a home that provides safety and stability for ourselves and our families. Right now, that freedom is denied to many of us.
When our government passed the federal Fair Housing Act in 1968, it was making a promise to our nation that it would enforce justice and civil rights in the housing market. Our government is now breaking that promise.
We must urge members of Congress to keep our national promises, to protect housing consumers from illegal discrimination, and to fully fund fair housing enforcement work through Fair Housing Initiatives Program.
Erika L. Sanders is the president and CEO, of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council.
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