June 2026

The rules governing how landlords screen rental applicants have moved in landlords’ favor on multiple fronts over the past year, but the picture is more nuanced than it may appear at first glance. On November 25, 2025, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a Secretary’s letter that rescinded three of its most influential criminal-screening guidance documents, returning broad discretion to owners and operators of federally assisted housing. Closer to home, Kansas City Ordinance 231019, the local rule that once threatened to reshape screening practice across the Kansas City, Missouri market, has been largely dismantled, although the picture is not as clean as some commentators suggest.

For owners and operators with mixed portfolios, the practical compliance question has changed meaningfully. Here is where things stand and what we recommend.

What HUD Just Did

HUD’s November 25, 2025 letter, signed by Secretary Scott Turner, rescinded three guidance documents that had shaped owner and Public Housing Authority (PHA) practice for the better part of a decade:

• Notice PIH 2015-19 – which had instructed owners not to rely on arrest records alone to deny admission, terminate assistance, or evict tenants.
• 2016 Office of General Counsel Guidance – which had cautioned that criminal-history policies producing disparate impact could violate the Fair Housing Act and discouraged blanket bans.
• 2022 Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Memo – which had reiterated those limits and supplied investigative procedures for evaluating criminal-screening policies.

HUD’s stated rationale is that the rescinded documents created confusion and a chilling effect on lawful screening, and that owners and PHAs should fully exercise the screening, monitoring, and enforcement tools available under 24 CFR 960.204, 24 CFR 982.553, and related authorities. The letter emphasizes mandatory denial categories, broad permissive screening authority, and the obligation to maintain “decent, safe, and affordable” housing.

What HUD Did Not Change

It is just as important to understand what the rescission does not do. The Fair Housing Act itself is unchanged. The disparate-impact framework articulated in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project remains binding law. Blanket bans, inconsistent application of screening criteria, and policies that produce unjustified discriminatory effects continue to expose owners to liability, with or without HUD’s prior guidance to point to.

In practical terms: HUD has removed what many in the industry treated as “safe harbor” guidance. It has not removed the underlying legal risk. Documentation, consistency, and individualized assessment remain essential.

Kansas City Ordinance 231019: What Survived, What Did Not

Kansas City passed Ordinance 231019 in January 2024, with most provisions taking effect in August 2024. As originally enacted, the ordinance attempted to do four things at once:

• Classify source of income (including Section 8 vouchers and other government housing assistance) as a protected category, effectively requiring landlords to accept vouchers.
• Prohibit denial of tenancy based solely on prior criminal history.
• Prohibit denial based on evictions older than one year.
• Prohibit denial based solely on adverse credit history.

Two developments in 2025 dramatically changed the legal status of the ordinance.

• The federal injunction. In Jones & Vogel v. City of Kansas City, Missouri, Case No. 4:24-cv-00649-RK, Judge Roseann A. Ketchmark granted a preliminary injunction on February 11, 2025, halting enforcement of the source-of-income provisions. The court found that compelling landlords to participate in the Housing Choice Voucher program effectively forced them to waive Fourth Amendment rights by consenting to government inspections and program conditions as the price of renting their own property. Our firm has covered the litigation in detail on www.mokslaw.com.
• House Bill 595. On May 7, 2025, the Missouri General Assembly passed House Bill 595, which Governor Mike Kehoe signed into law. HB 595 took effect August 28, 2025 and prohibits any Missouri county or city from enacting, maintaining, or enforcing an ordinance that, among other things, (1) discriminates against landlords based on a tenant’s lawful and verifiable source of income (with a limited exception for veterans’ benefits), and (2) “restricts a landlord’s ability to use or consider income-qualifying methods, credit scores, credit reports, eviction or property damage history, or criminal history, according to such landlord’s own customarily applied criteria.”

Where That Leaves Kansas City Landlords Today

The source-of-income piece of Ordinance 231019 is no longer in force. Between the federal injunction and the statewide preemption in HB 595, Kansas City landlords are not required to accept Section 8 vouchers or other government housing assistance as a condition of renting their property.

The status of the ordinance’s criminal-history, credit, and eviction-history restrictions is closer to settled than not, but reasonable lawyers can read the text differently. HB 595 expressly preempts local ordinances that “restrict a landlord’s ability to use or consider … credit scores, credit reports, eviction or property damage history, or criminal history” under the landlord’s customary criteria. Read straightforwardly, that language sweeps in the very provisions of Ordinance 231019 that limited criminal-history, credit, and eviction-based denials. The City of Kansas City has not formally repealed those portions of the ordinance, however, and they technically remain on the books.

In our view, the better reading of HB 595 is that those portions are preempted and unenforceable as a matter of state law. But because the City has not removed the language, and because the contours of HB 595’s preemption have not been tested across every conceivable application, prudent landlords and operators should not treat the criminal-history and eviction-history provisions of Ordinance 231019 as dead letter until that issue is fully resolved, particularly given the documentation, recordkeeping, and uniform-application principles that the ordinance imposed. Most of those practices are sound regardless of the legal status of the ordinance.

Where the Federal Reset and the Local Landscape Meet

For owners of federally assisted housing within Kansas City, the HUD letter and the post-HB 595 landscape work in the same direction: greater discretion to screen, monitor, and enforce. That convergence is real, but it does not eliminate risk. Three points to keep in view:

• Permissive does not mean automatic. HUD authorizes discretionary screening, but the Fair Housing Act still requires that this discretion be exercised through documented, individualized review rather than categorical denials. Disparate-impact theory survived the rescission of HUD’s guidance.
• Mandatory denials still control. Federal law continues to require denial in specific categories (lifetime sex offender registration and certain drug-related convictions for federally assisted housing). Those mandatory categories were never optional.
• Documentation is the strongest defense that remains. With HUD’s prior safe-harbor guidance withdrawn and Ordinance 231019 partially preempted but still on the books, the file you build on every screening decision is your best protection against a Fair Housing complaint or a local enforcement attempt.

A Note for Kansas Landlords

Properties on the Kansas side of the state line were never subject to Ordinance 231019, and Kansas has not enacted a comparable statewide screening statute. Kansas landlords remain subject to the federal Fair Housing Act, the Kansas Act Against Discrimination, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and any applicable local ordinances. The disparate-impact analysis that limited blanket criminal bans before HUD’s rescission still applies to Kansas owners as a matter of federal law, the rescission simply removed an administrative interpretation, not the underlying statute.

Action Steps for Landlords and Operators

Whether you operate a single duplex or a multi-property portfolio, this is a good moment to review your screening program:

• Update your Tenant Selection Plan or screening policy. Confirm it reflects current HUD authority for assisted properties, the post-HB 595 landscape in Missouri, and any applicable local requirements.
• Remove rescinded guidance and obsolete ordinance references. Anything that cited the 2015, 2016, or 2022 HUD documents, or that built workflows around Ordinance 231019’s source-of-income provisions, should be revised.
• Audit your advertising and application process. Even with the source-of-income mandate gone, Fair Housing concerns about inconsistent application of screening criteria, pre-application pre-screening, and disparate-impact still apply.
• Build (or maintain) an individualized-assessment workflow. For any denial involving credit, criminal history, or eviction history, your file should reflect a holistic, case-by-case evaluation considering recency, severity, and any mitigating circumstances offered by the applicant.
• Lock down recordkeeping. Even setting aside Ordinance 231019’s three-year retention requirement, Fair Housing defense and FCRA compliance both depend on a paper trail. Build a system that survives staff turnover and audits.
• Train onsite staff. Most Fair Housing exposure originates with frontline conversations, not written policies. Refresh training to reflect both the federal shift and the post-HB 595 state-law landscape.
• Coordinate with counsel before changing termination practices. HUD’s emphasis on enforcement makes lease enforcement actions more attractive, but unlawful detainer practice in Missouri and Kansas still has procedural traps that can derail an otherwise good case.

How We Can Help

Our firm represents landlords, property managers, and real estate investors across Missouri and Kansas. We have followed Ordinance 231019 since its introduction, including the

Jones & Vogel litigation and the passage of HB 595, and we routinely advise on Tenant Selection Plan review, Fair Housing risk assessment, lease drafting, and unlawful detainer litigation. If the November HUD letter or the post-HB 595 environment has you wondering whether your screening program still holds up, we welcome the conversation.

Contact us today for a consultation:

Missouri Office: 1903 Wyandotte St., Suite 100, Kansas City, MO 64108 | (816) 931-2207

Kansas Office: 1901 W. 47th Place, Suite 300, Westwood, KS 66205 | (913) 262-2207

Email: julie@mokslaw.com | Web: www.mokslaw.com