Daily Real Estate News  |  October 9, 2007  |   Landlords Want More Say on Who Moves In
After a news story about housing discrimination recently appeared in hundreds of daily newspapers nationwide, thousands of questions and complaints have poured in from landlords and home sellers who say they should have more choice in who they do business with, without the government's interference.

However, the federal law banning housing discrimination does exempt owners selling their own property without assistance from a real estate professional, says Kim Kendrick, assistant secretary for the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

That said, these owners are subject to the law if they advertise. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has cited landlords for ads that read "no children allowed" or "nice Christian family."

But some landlords complain: "It's my property."

"We as a society have made a judgment that other values trump, 'but it's my property,'" says Craig Gurian, executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center of Metro New York, who teaches a housing discrimination course at Fordham University. "Making sure the residential real estate markets are open to people in a nondiscriminatory way is a more important value. So there are just some things that you can't do."

Source: Gannett News Service, Deborah Barfield Berry (10/05/07)