The best way to avoid discriminating against anyone who is looking for a place to live is to treat everyone the same, the lawyers advised the group. If you check the criminal record of one person, you need to check for criminal records on every applicant for an apartment. If you brag about the neighborhood schools to one person, you should brag about them to everybody. Lessors and sellers aren't supposed to discriminate against families with children, unless the house or unit is in a designated senior community. Stay away from questions about people's nationality, even in seemingly casual conversation.
Dicks specializes in housing law.
The tenant is required to bear the expense of any major alterations to the premises, though. One particularly sticky area of the law is the requirement that people with mental, as well as physical disabilities, be accommodated. Some landlords are discovering that can make for some surprising requests. A potential tenant refused to take an apartment until she had checked it for demons. Dicks told the manager he could not exclude her from leasing the apartment.