For my first blog, I thought I comment on an article I read yesterday in the New York Times.  I found the article "Couple’s Suit Accuses Real Estate Firm of Bias Against Children" by Andy Newman to be interesting on many levels.  The story basically focuses on an expecting couple who are consistently turned down to rent apartments in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn.  Eventually a law suit is brought against the owners and the couple’s brokerage firm, Brown Harris Stevens, for discrimination against renting to families with children under the Fair Housing Act.

Discrimination is clearly wrong and let us look at this story from the owners (landlord) side.  Say you own a two family townhouse; you live in one unit and you rent out the other unit for income and living in a quiet environment (yes, which may be possible in the city) is a value you hold high.  You have rented to families in the past and found the noise from young children to be understandable and disturbing none the less.  You would prefer to rent to a couple that is quiet.  Well that is illegal under the Fair Housing Act.  In my opinion, that seems very unfair to the townhouse owner who resides in his/her own building.  In a Coop you can deny a potential purchaser from buying an apartment in your building because they throw loud parties or play the piano at odd hours, but you just have to accept the noise of children in your multi-family townhouse.  Yes, families deserve the right to find an acceptable place to live and prosper too.  I wonder if the solution is to exclude houses under four units or small houses where the owner is in residence in one of the units.  Since the housing stock in Park Slope contains a large portion of owner occupied townhouses, it is not a surprise the family in question had these problems.

As the story was reported, the owners and brokers seemingly have to lie to protect themselves when they do not want to rent to families with children.  It is clearly an unenviable position for all.  It is so easy to blame the broker for he/she is breaking the law technically.  But what do you do after a prospective owner calls you (a real estate broker) indicates he wants quiet tenants, you tell him he can not discriminate against children and he says fine, just make sure they are quiet (meaning no young children or babies)?  If the owner lives in the building, my personal moral compass is to side with the owner on this issue.  Fortunately I have never been confronted with this dilemma in Manhattan, nor do I do that many rentals, but it is interesting and I wonder how I would handle it.  I also wonder if my viewpoint is colored by not having any children myself. 

Conversely, the Fair Housing Act causes problems if you are targeting families.  If you have a four bedroom apartment and wish to include in the advertising "perfect for families", you cannot, because the Fair Housing Act prohibits that form of advertising text.  How many couples are looking for a four bedroom apartment?  And if they are, wouldn’t they have the common sense to look at the apartment even if the advertising text included the phrase "perfect for families"?   It seems silly to me.

Let me know your thoughts!

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