A housing voucher is a piece of paper that says the federal government will cover part of your rent. It is worthless if no landlord will take it.

On March 15, 2021, the Iowa House spent the afternoon deciding whether landlords could refuse them. Joe Mitchell, then a state representative, voted seven times on that bill. Six times he voted no. Once he voted yes.

The bill

Senate File 252 did one thing. It stripped Iowa cities and counties of the power to pass or enforce any ordinance stopping a landlord from "refusing to lease or rent out the dwelling unit to a person because of the person's use of a federal housing choice voucher issued by the United States department of housing and urban development."

Des Moines, Iowa City and Marion had already passed exactly those ordinances. The bill voided them.

Governor Kim Reynolds signed it on April 30, 2021. Cities lost the power to pass or enforce anything new that day; the enrolled Act gave the three existing ordinances until January 1, 2023, so that, as The Gazette put it at the time, "renters affected would not lose their homes right away." From that date landlords across Iowa could turn voucher holders away.

Three amendments, three no votes

Before the final vote, Democrats tried to carve out the people most likely to be hurt. The Iowa House Journal for that day records each attempt and how every member voted.

Amendment H-1183 would have exempted "a veterans affairs supportive housing voucher." That is HUD-VASH, the program that pairs a rent voucher with Veterans Affairs case management and clinical services for veterans who are homeless. It failed 36 to 57. Mitchell voted no.

Amendment H-1184 would have exempted "a mainstream voucher for a non-elderly person with disabilities." Those vouchers exist for people with disabilities who are at least 18 and not yet 62. It failed 37 to 56. Mitchell voted no.

Amendment H-1185 would have exempted "a family unification program voucher." That is the HUD program that exists for one purpose: it houses families when, in HUD's words, "the lack of adequate housing is a primary factor in the imminent placement of the family's child or children in out-of-home care, or the delay in the discharge of the child or children to the family from out-of-home care." It also covers young adults aged 18 to 24 who have just left foster care and are homeless or about to be. It failed 37 to 57. Mitchell voted no.

A fourth amendment, H-1163, would have delayed the law until July 2024 and applied it only to ordinances passed after that, so that cities which already had protections could keep them. It failed 37 to 57. Mitchell voted no.

A fifth vote, on an amendment to the Republican floor manager's own amendment, failed 37 to 57. Mitchell voted no. And before any of that, on the first amendment offered on the bill, he voted no on suspending the rules so the House could even consider it, after the Speaker ruled it not germane.

Then the bill came up for passage. It passed 56 to 38. Mitchell voted yes.

What each of those votes meant

Strip away the amendment numbers and the votes say this:

• A veteran sleeping in a car, handed a voucher by the VA, can be told no by every landlord in town.
• A disabled Iowan under 62, on a voucher built for exactly that situation, can be told no.
• A parent whose only barrier to getting their kids back out of foster care is an apartment can be told no — and the children stay where they are.
• A 19-year-old who just aged out of foster care with a voucher and no family can be told no.

Nobody has to give a reason. Making that refusal legal across Iowa, and stripping cities of the power to say otherwise, was the entire effect of the bill.

He is running on housing now

Mitchell is running for Congress in Iowa's 2nd District, and housing is one of the things he talks about most. It is worth reading that record together.

His campaign's housing plan is deregulation — we looked at how that experiment already went in Iowa, where a law capping what cities can require for stormwater runoff met a state with worsening floods.

He also calls the federal low-income housing tax credit "a disaster," while two development firms he later partnered in collected $2,559,880 from the Iowa workforce housing credit he voted in 2021 to expand.

So the pattern across his housing record is consistent. The subsidy that flowed to companies he had a stake in was worth expanding. The subsidy that goes to a homeless veteran, a disabled adult, or a parent trying to get their children back was worth making refusable.

What the record shows

On March 15, 2021, Joe Mitchell voted against three amendments that would have exempted homeless veterans' housing vouchers, disability vouchers, and foster-care family vouchers from Senate File 252 — a bill that barred Iowa cities and counties from requiring landlords to accept federal housing vouchers at all. All three failed. He also voted against delaying the law so existing local protections could stand. He then voted for the bill, which passed the Iowa House 56 to 38 and was signed into law, voiding the ordinances in Des Moines, Iowa City and Marion as of January 1, 2023.

Source

Iowa House Journal, March 15, 2021, pages 722 through 729, and the Iowa Legislature's own bill history and amendment texts for Senate File 252. The vote was flagged in a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee release on September 7, 2026; every vote above was confirmed against the Iowa Legislature's own records.