When reviewing rental applications for Long Beach properties, there are a variety of fair housing guidelines to consider. Far too often landlords fail to evaluate fair to consider the rules and regulations that govern rental properties. In 2019 alone, almost 2,000 housing discrimination complaints were filed in California. Fortunately, the following tips can provide you with some insight into the policies related to fair housing.
1.
Discrimination
- Per the
Federal Fair Housing Act
and
California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act, you cannot discriminate against tenants based on race, color, national origin, immigration status, first language, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, disability, marital status, familial status, source of income, and/or military status. Actions that fall under the umbrella of discrimination include refusing to rent, setting different rental agreements, falsely claiming your rental is unavailable, charging a higher rent fee, and harassing a tenet.
2. Sexual Harassment
- Under the aforementioned Federal Fair Housing Act, sexual harassment is considered a form of sex discrimination and illegal. Examples of sexual harassment in housing include quid pro quo and hostile environment.
- Quid Pro Quo - requesting any form of sexual behavior from a rental applicant as a requirement for becoming a tenant, or evicting a tenant after they refuse to engage in any form of sexual behavior.
- Hostile Environment - subjecting a rental applicant to unwelcome sexual behavior that interferes with the sale, such as inappropriate touching or obscene comments.
3. Reasonable Accommodation
- Tenants with disabilities that affect their mobility, vision, and/or hearing are entitled to request reasonable accommodations to the rules, practices, and infrastructure of the rental. However, these modifications must be within reason. For example, installing handlebars in a bathroom or implementing a ramp are acceptable additions that provide equal opportunity to tenants who do not have a complete range of motion.
4. Service Animals
- You cannot institute a blanket ban against service animals or individuals with service animals, as all tenants are permitted to own service animals. To determine if a tenant’s animal is a service animal, you may only ask the following questions: 1. “Are you an individual with a disability?” and 2. “What is the disability-related task the animal has been trained to perform?” Additionally, you may not charge extra fees for tenants with service animals.
5. Criminal History
- Though California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act does not explicitly protect tenants from discrimination based on criminal history, it does limit your use of criminal history when reviewing a rental applicant. Such as, you cannot use criminal history to deliberately exclude tenants based on race or only run criminal history checks on racial minorities. Even advertising a blanket ban against tenants with criminal history goes against California law. That being said, you can check the criminal history of a potential tenant and generally deny their rental application if they were successfully convicted of a crime that poses a danger to employees, other tenants, and/or the rental itself.
With several guidelines surrounding rental applications, it is important to understand the factors you can deny potential tenants for. The following are all legal reasons to reject rental applications.
3 Reasons You Could Reject Tenants
- Poor credit scores
- Just remember to evaluate each tenant application by the same "poor" credit scores to show you are treating each applicant fairly.
- Negative references from prior landlords
- Ask the same questions of each prior landlord to ensure you are taking the same approach to each applicant's application.
- Known history of paying rent late
- Have a rule defined (i.e. 3 number of late pays in a given year) to help you evaluate each applicant by the same rules.
Understanding fair housing guidelines can be complicated but is necessary to effectively process rental applications. Finding a property management company that you feel comfortable with can ensure you follow these guidelines accordingly. If you would like assistance with fair housing guidelines, we invite you to call us today at (562) 888-0247.
Additional Fair Housing Guidelines
Should you wish to explore state and federal guidelines deeper we encourage you to visit the links below.
