1/16    If I own a condon/town house/house/etc. in SJ and I want to rent out
        one or of the rooms, i.e. "share" my place, can I discriminate?  Can I
        refuse to rent the rooms to males/females, singles/married/etc.,
        gays/straights/bi/etc., smokers, drinkers, partiers, nerds, etc.?  Is
        this legal since I am "sharing" the place with them?
        \_ I'm pretty sure I've never been in a rented apartment outside of
           student housing where there wasn't *some* form of discrimination.
           I have no idea what the legality of that is, but if you were to
           decide not to discriminate on the basis of gender, age, and
           marital status, you would be in a *very* small minority of landlords.
           And what about all those apartment ads that are in Chinese only?
           I've always wondered what would happen if a white guy were to call
           one of those up and ask to see the place.
           \-i think if you are a landlord as a business, you really do have
             a lot of obligations. for example, i have had bldg managment
             people could tell me "i am not allowed to answer your question
             whether there are a lot of childrent in the bldg" ... they were
             clearly sympathetic to the inquiry but said thier hands were
             tied. so what they ask explicitly is constrained ... i dunno
             how strong the presumptions are in this area and dunno what
             actually ends up happening.
             \_ Your naivete is almost touching.
             \_ There are of course ways of doing an end-run around some of
                these restrictions.  A common anti-children one is setting a
                maximum occupancy.  For "no young adults" there's a credit
                check, large deposit, and a minimum income figure.
        \- well i am not sure what would happen if you advertised "blacks and
           jews need not apply" ... if anything you'ld probably be asking
           for "extra-judicial remedies", but i do think in a case like this
           you can for all practical purposes pick anybody you want. if you
           have a poker game or movie night or book club at your house, nobody
           can force you to integrate something like that. if your book club
           meets at the public library, it may be another matter. while
           "state action" doesnt mean "wholly run by the govt" and the trigger
           may be as small as something like admitting a student with a pell
           grant or applying for a liquor lic, it still doesnt apply to who
           you invite to your house. it may be an interesting first amd case
           to see if you could be liable for some kind of group defamation
           of you took out an ad for something like "hong kong businessmen
           in vancouver are dirty cheats."           /
                is this psb?   - psb's last fan  ---/
        \_ As it's a rental, I'm pretty sure non-discrimination law applies.
           As a practical matter, you can rent to whoever you want and nobody
           has any recourse.  Where you'd get in trouble is if you put
           "no <protected class> need apply", or if you had many, many rentals
           and consistantly excluded some group.  It's illegal to decide to
           say not rent to gays or something, but you could always say "person
           X was the best fit".
        \_ The Federal Fair Housing Act 48 USC Sec 3606 (b)(2) probably
           applies to you and exempts you from the anti-discrimination
           requirement ("rooms ... in dwellings containing living quarters
           occupied by no more than 4 families living independently of
           each other, if the owner maintains and occupies one such living
           quarters as his residence").
           While it is okay to say M (or F) only and non-smoker/drinker/
           partier (b/c of the noise) you probably shouldn't say no gay
           or married need apply.
        \_ More importantly, can you advertise that you are only looking for
           hot single asian female roommates? My...um...friend wants to know.
           \_ Why do you only want hot asians?  Are you broken?  Hot black
              chicks are just as hot, and so are hot white chicks, and hot
              Latinas, and hot Indians.  I love them all. I will go look at
              my multiracial porn now.
           \_ Single/Female is probably okay. Maybe even asian. Hot is not.
              Even if it were, if your friend expects to get some action
              from his tenant, he is walking into a legal mine-field. Unless
              he wants to defend against all sorts of harassment claims (and
              possible criminal charges) if things go badly, advise him
              against picking tenants b/c they are hot.