Fair housing laws support fairness, prevent discrimination in housing, and aim to guarantee that every person has the freedom to a harmless and comfortable home. However, it can be occasionally complicated for rental property managers and owners to comprehend and abide by these laws. Fair housing laws have a simple objective, but putting them into practice can be challenging.
Understanding fair housing laws and how they apply to you is essential to keeping your rental properties compliant. Hang around to find out the fundamentals of fair housing laws, common compliance matters, and the ideal approaches for rental property owners and managers.
Understanding Fair Housing Laws
The primary step to understanding fair housing laws is realizing that, depending on where your rental property is placed, various laws at the federal, state, and local levels might be applicable.
The first law several individuals imagine regarding fair housing is the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968. This directive prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, and family status at a national level. The decree pertains to housing sales, rentals, and financing, striving to ensure equal access in all housing-related transactions.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) carries out this law, which reviews criticisms and works to uphold fair housing standards across the U.S. In addition to the Fair Housing Act, other federal housing laws support and highlight the values of fair housing. Together, these guidelines work toward a more equitable housing landscape across the country.
Other than federal regulations, several state and local laws provide more protections for renters, tackling worries like eviction rights, security deposit limits, and discrimination according to income source, sexual orientation, or sexual identity. Certain towns have rent control or stabilization regulations to prevent excessive rent increases, guaranteeing housing affordability in high-demand areas. Local tenant rights may also include securities against eviction during severe weather, access to habitability standards, and requirements for clear communication between landlords and tenants. You can find more statistics about housing laws in your state online.
Common Compliance Challenges for Property Owners
Understanding the directive is a crucial initial step, but it is also vital to understand common scenarios that may result in housing law violations and how to evade them. For illustration, some common challenges rental property owners and landlords face in observing fair housing laws typically arise from implicit partiality or reliance on old-fashioned methods.
In particular, tenant screening can be difficult for some property managers and owners because federal law does not permit you to decline to rent to someone according to their disability status, age, or familial status. Subsequently, choosing beforehand that you will only rent to adults without children, for instance, or that you won’t rent to individuals in their 20s, would both be examples of housing discrimination.
The same issue can happen when marketing the property, where property owners and managers may need to promote a specific kind of tenant. These practices also typically run afoul of state and federal housing laws. By recognizing these issues and adjusting your screening and marketing methods, you can better ensure fair and equitable treatment of all prospective residents.
Best Practices for Ensuring Compliance
There are important measures to guarantee that your property management strategies obey fair housing laws, such as creating and observing a standardized application process and creating principles for tenant selections, which is the best method to avoid unintended discrimination. Other best practices to ensure compliance include:
- Use inclusive language in rental advertisements to prevent discriminatory testimonials or inclinations.
- Be consistent with giving the same information, following the same procedures, and completing the same follow-up actions for each applicant.
- Ensure that your lease terms, guidelines, and policies are equally fair to all tenants.
- Stay informed about reasonable accommodations for tenants with incapacities, and respond to such requests promptly and appropriately.
- Keep detailed records of all applications, connections, and decisions, recording your reasons for approvals and denials in case of future disputes or inquiries.
- Communicate with an attorney or legal expert when creating guidelines or dealing with problematic scenarios.
Developing and observing a written non-discrimination policy that shows your obligation to Fair Housing compliance is helpful in upholding reliability.
Property Management Companies in Fair Housing Compliance
Experienced property managers must understand all applicable local, state, and federal rules. In addition, as trained professionals, they have courses to ensure that your tenant relations, screening, documentation, and other functions comply with these regulations. This can give you serenity and help reduce the risk of discrimination claims altogether.
Building a Fair Housing Culture
With so much in danger in an investment property, you need to be familiar with laws governing rental properties, housing, and connected issues to prevent legal consequences more easily. Property owners can help ensure equitable treatment for all tenants by getting and complying with fair housing laws.
Teaming up with an experienced property management company like Real Property Management North Point provides the knowledge to deal with the difficulties of fair housing rules in Cumming and its vicinity. Contact us today or call 404-905-9455 for additional data on guaranteeing housing law compliance and other quality management services.
We are pledged to the letter and spirit of U.S. policy for the achievement of equal housing opportunity throughout the Nation. See Equal Housing Opportunity Statement for more information.
