I am a small time landlord with 3 houses. One, my wife’s house before we met, is in a small town of about 800 people so it seems everybody knows everybody else’s business.
A little over a month ago our tenant gave 30 days notice they were moving out and as I normally do (if they are good tenants) tell them to let their friends and family know that the house will be for rent and to contact me for an application if interested as I have found these referrals a good way to get good tenants. I also let my friends, family, co-workers also know. I haven’t advertised a rental in over 5 years due to somebody in my, or my soon to be former tenant’s social circle is looking for a house to rent. We received and did showings to 4 different couples, 2 single moms, and their kids if they had any. We have get a new tenant moving in soon, the former tenant’s brother-in-law and his wife who recently had another baby and were looking for a 3 bedroom house.
So at the end of last week I had a message on my personal Facebook page and a lady asked if I owned the house at “XXX Main Street”. I said yes. She said she heard that “Mary Jones” had moved out and was wondering when I was going to advertise the house for rent as she was interested. I told her I have someone moving in already and didn’t advertise the place as I had applicants though referrals. She replied that not advertising was in violation of the Fair housing Act as I was discriminating against people because people of color, like her, who did not have the chance to apply and “will be contacting the people I need to contact”. I responded that I don’t discriminate against people of color because I currently rent to a Hispanic couple and my top pick for a house 2 years ago was a Black family but once they found out they would be too close to the elementary school for busing they turned it down. She said that didn’t matter as I don’t advertise my rentals, that is the discrimination against everybody who may be looking to rent.
So am I in violation of the Fair Housing Act if I didn’t advertise?
It doesn’t seem the Fair Housing Act requires anyone to advertise, just that if you do you , you can’t make discriminatory statements.
Make, print or publish any notice, statement or advertisement with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation or discrimination
I agree. I couldn’t find any support for the idea that you must advertise.
Her confusion might stem from this:
Federal law requires that applicants for participation in HUD’s subsidized and unsubsidized housing programs pursue affirmative fair housing marketing policies
As the others have said, you’re fine, but a tiny piece of free internet legal advice: it is a good idea not to respond to stuff like that, or to respond in much less detailed fashion. Even in the scenario where you’ve never done anything even remotely wrong, once a person has already said they’re going to file a complaint against you, what you say in response isn’t gonna help you, and it could hurt you (in time and money and headache).
First mistake. Even if you are not discriminating you could accidentally write something that makes you look like you do. For example, you talked about renting to a couple and a family. What?! You don’t rent to single people? You’re discriminating based on family status and I will be contacting the people I need to contact.
Yeah, in hindsight once she mentioned any sort of action, legal or otherwise I should have shut up.
My wife called a friend of hers who still lives in that town and asked if she knew the lady who messaged me. She said she knew of her and the lady liked “stirring the pot” with stuff going on it town.
I will wait and see if I get anything in the mail from who ever she contacted, if she even did.
Yeah, pretty much the only response you should ever give to someone saying they’re going to call the authorities on what they claim is your “illegal activities” is, “Okay, I’ll wait to hear from said authorities, we’re done here, never contact me again”, and then cut them off. Same as if someone says they’re calling their lawyer to sue you.
If there’s a real issue, the authorities will contact you. No other discussions could possibly be of value to you.
The linked article seems to say that this type of discrimination is measured by what you say WHEN you advertise, not THAT you need to advertise or not. If you don’t state your preferences out loud, you can’t be proven to be discriminating by them.
IMHO this law seems like forcing equality of opportunity ( to rent), which probably isn’t too bad an idea. Of course the actual decision requires some form of discrimination; after all you have to choose which person to rent to. I think that’s where unjust discrimination, if there is any, is much harder to root out. Nobody knows what you actually base your decision on. This law just states you can’t say bad things up-front in public. But it doesn’t seem to apply at all in this case.
All true for a single property renter who only changes tenants every several years. It’s the property managers of large apartment buildings that can be scrutinized.
Seattle recently passed an ordinance saying you had to rent to the first person who applied, if they’re otherwise qualified. The intent was to prevent illegal discrimination. I don’t know how it’s going.
Oh man, that’s a bad idea. I have a feeling that ordinance will result in a lot of extra scrutiny and hair-splitting in the paperwork, will hurt more people than it helps, and (hopefully) won’t spread very fast.
I do some application review and decision making in my job, and although my review is different than this, many things can be done to not-exactly-comply with an ordinance like that.
First, you play around with exactly what order the application was submitted? I’m assuming plenty of people still fill out and mail/hand submit applications, and maybe some are electronic. Application A was filled out and mailed on the 10th but arrived on the 13th. B was filled out and dropped off in person on the 11th, but the bin sorted and sent to me the next afternoon on the 12th. C was emailed to me on the morning of the 12th. Which got to me first, and which did I open first? You need a pretty strict application system and an auditing method to make sure that works properly; they are a lot less common than you might think.
Then you get very picky about which applications are “completed in full” and reject or accept selectively. There’s also wiggle-room in how you communicate the application deficiencies since a range of options is available… maybe you leave a voicemail at one person’s incorrectly scribbled phone number, but the second person also provided a functioning email address. Poor Schmuch #3 only has a snail mail address, so he has to wait 5 days to get his offer but misses his 48 hour window so I move on to the next applicant.
You can also just yank/rescind the advertisement if you don’t like who’s applying first. I’ve actually had a job denied to me using that exact tactic. Very hard to argue against someone changing their mind and deciding not not rent right now because of a personal situation or finances. It would cost the applicant more to dig up the truth than the thing being denied is worth.
Wow, as a landlord that seems very difficult. If discrimination is a problem, and I’m sure it is, then I can accept that drastic measures like this might be necessary.
I’m more upset by the 48 hour refusal window, though. My rental market can sometimes move so quickly, that being forced to wait 48 hours for somebody who has ghosted me (for whatever reason), means that my second and third choice tenants have already moved on to someplace else, so now I’m starting over again.
A quick refusal is fine, but at least half of people just stop responding when they don’t need me anymore. It’s either too stressful or too demanding to send a courtesy text saying “I’m no longer interested” or “I’ve signed with someplace else, but thanks.” Even an “F-off” would be more courteous than silence when I’m waiting for a confirmation of a showing or other response.
Last time I told prospective tenants that I would be reviewing applications and choosing randomly from all qualified applicants. I would have done it, too, as it seems fair and non-discriminatory. It didn’t come to that, because my current tenant understood the hint nobody else picked up on, which was offer me more money.
yup, I’ve had that same crap, bullshite threats. Also, I don’t know where you are, I am in Arizona, and once I question the applicants I DON’T WANT, about whether they are comfortable knowing they’ll sometimes have scorpions in the house, (I do provide remediation, but it’s not foolproof) that yes, scorps do get in the homes and yes, do sting (did you know they drop out of A/C vents?), and I’ve been stung 3 times, I can usually chase off the ones I don’t want. You can probably come up with a deterrent for the applicants you don’t want.
I’m not persuaded racial discrimination is a problem, the only color most landlords care about is green. They want reliable people who pay their rent on time and don’t tear the place up.
At the end of the day, landlords should be able to decline renting to lunatics, drug addicts, and sketchy types and “problem” people in favor of good tenants. People who have never ran a business should not be making policy or law for people who do, that way lies madness. Like Seattle.
There is plenty of historical evidence that a hefty fraction of landlords used to use “must be white people” as a shorthand to eliminate what they thought of as people who mostly won’t pay their rent on time and mostly will tear the place up.
It’s precisely because that heuristic was so widely used that all the anti-discrimination legislation was enacted. It’s precisely because so much of that is still going on that continued enforcement is needed.
Yes, from an economic utility perspective any non-racist landlord in a region full of racist landlords should be able to exploit their competitor’s bad decision making to collect a lot of good non-white tenants willing to pay above market rates. The same thinking applies to employers looking for workers as well
The fact of the matter is that significant discrimination persists in the face of this economic reality. Which rightists take as proof that racism is a logical belief supported by economic evidence while leftists argue it’s another adverse and expensive side effect of human cussedness.
You accidentally started talking about unreliable people who destroy apartments, lunatics, drug addicts, sketchy types and “problem” people when everyone else was talking about racial discrimination.
Do you think this might be related to the difficulty the world has had convincing you that racial discrimination is a problem?