Real Estate Glossary – Fair Housing Law

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Federal Fair Housing law prohibits discrimination in housing because of:

• Race or Color
• National Origin (the country in which one was born)
• Religion
• Sex
• Familial Status (whether one has children or not, whether married or not)
• Handicap/Disability

Some states include additional groups, such as “sexual orientation”. You can check your state’s protected classes here.

The most common question I hear from buyers is “Is this a good neighborhood?”

What they’re really asking about of course, is either the crime rate or the type of people living in the area. Fair Housing law prevents me, your Realtor from telling you about the neighbors if that conversation might stray into discussing one of the protected classes. Most Realtors just don’t discuss the topic at all, for fear of violating Fair Housing law. It’s rumored that the FHA sends testers out to work with Realtors, secretly checking for violations of the law. True? I don’t know but I don’t want to find out.

Besides, my idea of “nice” or “good” neighbors might vary wildly from yours. Some people find the idea of living near folks of another race, religion or sexual orientation is a big problem. Others don’t care. My best advice to buyers in this scenario is to drive through and walk through the neighborhood yourself, at different times of the day, to see what you see. Talk to your potential new neighbors. Realtors can’t ask or answer questions about the protected classes but buyers can, and should. You’d be surprised what neighbors will tell you!

As for crime, I can and will point you towards websites that list crime statistics, usually by ZIP code. I usually beg off answering the ‘crime’ question, because one person’s ’safe neighborhood’ is another person’s ‘fringe neighborhood’ is another person’s ‘hood.’

Housing not covered by the Federal Fair Housing law

• Single family housing not sold through a broker
• Owner-occupied housing of no more than 4 units (you own a duplex & rent the other side)
• Housing operated by private clubs which limit membership (co-op’s)

The first bullet above applies to For Sale By Owner homes. Selling it yourself? Discriminate all you want. I’m kidding of course, but the government can’t interfere if you want to sell your home yourself but intend to refuse to sell it to someone who practices the B’hai faith or was born in Australia.

The second & third bullet points don’t apply much in metro Phoenix. But there are duplexes and fourplexes in our Valley, and even a few co-op’s down in South Scottsdale. No one can force you to rent ther other side of your duplex to a family with 17 kids if you abhor children. Similarly, the co-op board reviews applicants who want to purchase a unit, and they make their own rules about who can move in.

For more information, see the Federal Fair Housing booklet and information about updates to Fair Housing law. Think you’ve been discriminated against in housing? The National Fair Housing Advocate Online can help. Note that all these resources apply to housing you buy. For help with rental situations, see the Arizona Residential Landlord Tenant Act.

Related Posts

• See all entries in the FAQ files here
• Click here to find online resources to check out neighborhoods, including demographics, crime statistics, HOA contact information, etc.

You Can’t Sue a Soapbox

A Federal appeals court ruled on March 14, 2008 that “the soapbox isn’t liable for what the speaker has said.”

That gem stems from a lawsuit filed in February 2006 by a group of Chicago-area attorneys, accusing Craigslist of violating federal housing laws by publishing housing ads that attempted to exclude potential buyers/tenants because of their race, gender, or religion. The District Court judge ruled that Craiglist serves as an intermediary party and not a publisher and is therefore not liable for what individual posters said in their ads.

It’s like the difference between the glossy Homes for Sale magazines and your local grocery store’s bulletin board. Each probably has classified ads touting area homes sale. But the glossy publication employs a staff who are responsible (among many other things) for making sure that federal Fair Housing rules aren’t violated in the ad text. But the grocery store is just providing a bulletin. Individual homeowners can post any discriminatory ad up there they want to (one prays they don’t!) and no one can hold the grocer liable.

Why It Matters – This actually could have been a watershed moment in American legal history. If Craigslist had been held liable for the content of their users’ ads, it could have conceivably shut down the site and changed the world of online social networking. Craig and those other sites like Flickr, MySpace and Facebook presumably employ some staff, but the amount of staff needed to screen every ad, post, comment and photo would be immense. One imagines a lot more jobs suddenly being outsourced to India. <snerk>

In my opinion, it seemed unlikely that Craigslist would be held liable for the content of it’s posts. Even the casual online visitor (I hope) knows that bulletin board, auction & social networking websites don’t screen your posts. But a whole bunch of attorneys felt the case had merit, so what do I know? Apparently, they felt that bulletin boards in cyberspace were just different enough from pen-and-ink bulletin boards to warrant a legal once-over.

Housing discrimination is terrible and folks shouldn’t do it, but holding Craig responsible for the stoopid things regular folks sometimes say seems to take things a bit far.