It's right outside your door

[kdavoli]

Ashton Oregon was out of date with their record keeping on their compliance with the Equal Housing Opportunity Act. The Act says a lot of things, but the gist is, 'you have to rent your place to the first qualified person who applies - regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status or handicap'. Currently 'sexual

Comments

[soong]

That sure looks like some damning evidence, but I'd be curious to see results of reordering the applicants to see how often the second applicant gets things just for being the most recent and freshest in the landlord's mind. ( Or some other explanation. Can't really get in their head that much. It could even be an activist landlord giving deference to those traditionally shat upon. )

[sebastian_bound]

I can honestly say, from working in a landlord's office, that you call the first person who came in first. And not only that, you tell the second person who looked at it, "we had someone apply for this apartment this morning, if they don't take the apartment, we'll call you."

Not only are you interested in keeping the apartment full to maximize your rent intake, but you are also worried about Equal Housing laws. I was trained in ways of answering questions to make sure we didn't appear to give preference to anyone. Landlords here (in Allegheny County) are sent those "secret shoppers" to make sure they're complying with the laws.

[soong]

In my brief career as a renter the landlords I've had have been more informal. I interpreted the study as more of a psych-test than an accounting audit. If the law effectively requires more accounting to make sure landlords do the right thing (both to remind themselves and as documentation in case of legal action) then it sounds like some know this and some need educating.

[ravens_prentice]

Yeah, when I was doing research for my Fair Housing Act memo I read about a lot of these studies. None ever had very large sample sizes, but that didn't seem to keep them from being useful in court.