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"I'm so angry. Every time I talk about it I get emotional because I could have been dead. It was a life-to-death situation and nobody was trying to help me," Mildred said, her voice trailing on the other end of the line.

A victim of domestic violence, she recounted desperately searching for a new place to live in Westchester County, New York. She had obtained a Section 8 housing voucher -- a federal program that helps qualifying low-income tenants afford their rent -- but just when she thought she'd found a new home for herself and her children away from her alleged abuser, she says she became the victim of discrimination. (Vox is withholding her full name and some identifying details to protect her privacy.)

Housing voucher recipients don't just face the normal barriers to finding an affordable place to live. They can also face a little-known but insidious form of discrimination called "source of income discrimination," where landlords refuse to rent to people with Section 8 housing vouchers or certain other types of legal income. While this type of discrimination is legal in most states, in 2019 New York passed a law banning the practice.

Yet it still happens in the state.

After Mildred told her landlord that she would be paying with a voucher, she and her lawyers say the landlord strung her along before taking the place off the market. She says it took her nearly four months to find a new place, all while living in fear of further abuse.

Stories like Mildred's are what prompted a watchdog group called Housing Rights Initiative (HRI) to take action. On Wednesday, the group and the law firm Newman Ferrara are filing a suit -- shared exclusively with Vox -- in New York state court against 36 realtors, brokers, and landlords, including Keller Williams Realty and a franchise of the international firm Century 21, alleging source of income discrimination.

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