Gavel and wooden house.

As a landlord, you are legally obligated to be fair to all tenants. This is especially important during tenant screening when you are accepting and denying prospective renters. While treating all of your tenants fairly is the backbone of being a good landlord, violating Fair Housing laws and either knowingly, or unknowingly, participating in housing discrimination can negatively impact your reputation and cost you thousands. We’re here to explain rental housing discrimination and nine things you should avoid:

1. Marketing Your Unit and Saying What Kind of Tenants You Want 

In your online rental listing, you have the opportunity to write a property description. You’re not allowed to write a description along the lines of “looking for a young family to rent to,” or “this unit is perfect for a couple without kids.” You are, however, able to advertise your property in a positive light. You can do this by highlighting details about your property rather than the tenants you want to live in it. For more advice on how to write a rental property description, learn more about what you can and can’t say in a rental listing.

2. Denying a Tenant Because of Protected Class 

According to Fair Housing laws, you cannot deny a tenant housing based on protected classes:

  • Race
  • Color
  • National origin
  • Religion
  • Sex
  • Familial status
  • Disability

Other identifiers that are not explicitly covered by Fair Housing laws but are still considered protected by anti-discrimination legislation include age, sexual orientation, marital status, those who use Section 8 housing vouchers to pay rent, and those who have a criminal record (unless they could be dangerous to other tenants or the rental).

In other words, the criteria above are not reasons why you can accept or deny a prospective tenant; the only information you use to make a decision about a renter must be found out through the formal tenant screening process.

Here are a few legal reasons for denying a tenant based on their application

3. Treating Each Prospective Tenant Differently 

When it comes to screening your tenants, you need to follow the same process for every tenant. This ensures your process is thorough and complete with every tenant, which is the best way to find quality tenants while ensuring that you’re not accidentally discriminating against anyone. For example, if you require one tenant to authorize a background check and not another, then you are discriminating against one of the tenants. The best way to be fair and thorough is to strictly follow your tenant screening process with every prospective applicant.

4. Treating Current Tenants Differently

After you’ve selected your tenants, you still need to be fair in order to avoid rental housing discrimination. You cannot require different rules for tenants in the same unit. For example, if you have a late fee rule, then you should enforce it for every tenant on the rental agreement. You cannot pick and choose which rules to enforce depending on who you’re dealing with because that is discrimination. Similarly, if you have identical units in the same building, you should charge the same rent price and deposits to avoid a discrimination lawsuit. If you have different prices, it can seem as though you are altering the price based on who you rent to.

5. Saying a Unit Is Not Available If It’s Still On the Market 

As a landlord, it can be difficult to reject tenants, especially when you feel the need to provide an explanation. That being said, you cannot tell a tenant that the unit is no longer available if it is indeed still available. The best way to get around this is to not deny your tenants until you’ve accepted a different applicant who is ready to move forward with signing a rental agreement.

6. Harassing or Intimidating Tenants 

It is considered rental housing discrimination to harass or intimidate your tenants. An example of this is if you create unfair terms for renting someone, such as only renting to a tenant as long as they do something for you. You cannot exchange renting your unit to somebody for anything besides rent money. It’s best to be friendly and professional with your tenants.

7. Asking Excessive Questions During Tenant Screening 

One form of harassment and intimidation is asking excessive questions. As a landlord, you should ask your tenants screening questions before renting to them so long as they are related to being a tenant and are not overly personal. For example, you shouldn’t ask a tenant if he or she is married, has children, etc. However, you are allowed to ask, “How many people will be living in the unit?” After all, you are entitled to know how many people will be in the unit and everyone should be accounted for on the lease, including children and pets.

8. Steering Tenants to Certain Units or Neighborhoods Based on Race, Age, or Gender

It’s considered discrimination to recommend a unit or neighborhood to a tenant based on their protected class (age, gender, race, marital status, etc). If you want to recommend a unit to someone because of their preference for skyline views or an updated kitchen, that is completely fine. However, you cannot steer someone in a certain direction because you think they ‘belong’ there. Another example of steering is if you only show disabled tenants a unit on the first floor. If you think your recommendation might be biased, it’s best not to steer tenants to particular units or neighborhoods at all.

9. Refusing to Accommodate a Reasonable Disability Request 

You cannot accept or deny a tenant based on their disability. Furthermore, a disabled tenant might request modifications to the rental property to make it a comfortable and safe place for them to live. These accommodations are usually free, but in some cases, the structure of the house might need to be changed. In these cases, the tenant would be responsible for the modification costs unless the property is listed as federally assisted living.

Avoid Discrimination by Using Standardized Rental Processes

You can avoid rental housing discrimination by making sure you are aware of Fair Housing laws and ensuring that you use a standardized process for every prospective tenant. Learn more about how to properly screen your tenants, including how to review a tenant’s rental application, analyze a tenant credit report and background check, and how to properly accept or deny tenants.

Avail provides standardized rental applications and rental listing tools so you can ensure you’re not violating any Fair Housing laws. Learn more about how Avail helps landlords manage every step of the rental cycle.