A friend bought a duplex in Berkeley. Due to the tenant-friendly laws there, she will only rent to international university affiliates whose roles/visas will require them to leave after a year or two.
Interestingly, she is very YIMBY and liberal, and even has a PhD in urban planning. But no one wants a forever tenant!
Civil Rights Act of 1968, Unruh Civil Rights Act, ... there are a few other California specific legal statutes around civil rights/housing discrimination.
If you are sharing your own house vs renting out an autonomous unit, the rules are different (at least here in Seattle), you can discriminate a lot more legally than you could otherwise. So someone who rents room in their home only to Chinese international students is completely ok (as long as they share living space with the landlord). Not sure what the laws are in California, but federally it’s kosher.
You are right, here are the seattle FAQ on first qualified applications:
> Yes. The first-in-time requirement applies to duplexes and triplexes even if the owner resides in one of the units. The non-owner occupied units are considered separate dwellings, and therefore are subject to the Seattle Open Housing Ordinance, which includes the first-in-time
provisions.
Now if the lady in question was renting out the basement, that might count as an accessory dwelling unit, and she would be exempt under Seattle rules (but this is in SF, so the rules would be different).
My guess is that as long as she doesn't advertise the unit (in the sense that she put it up for application), she can simply mention its availability to a small network that conveys it by word of mouth. It is impossible to legislate that kind of discrimination, there are tons of units that don't officially go on the market (via advertising on zillow, for example) but still get rented out.
The Fair Housing Act (the part of the 1968 Civil Rights Act you are referring to) exempts owner-occupied buildings with less than five units, so it wouldn't apply to the other unit in an owner-occupied duplex.
Citizenship and national origin are, as is immigration status (under different laws.) Also source of income.
Renting only to international university affiliates on particular kinds of visas is directly discrimination on the basis of all of citizenship, national origin, immigration status, and source of income, and might also constitute disparate impact discrimination (which California FEHA also covers as well as direct discrimination) on other protected grounds if the direct discrimination wasn't enough.
Yes it is, but it's impossible to enforce because landlords can ask for your drivers license/ID with the application and if you are on a visa your ID says "LIMITED TERM" on it. So they can always say yes or no based on that but pretend it was something else that made them make the choice.
Looks like immigration status is protected. I wonder if a plaintiff could win a case on the grounds that they were discriminated against because they weren't on a temporary visa.
As a former lawyer, I realize it's possible to make the argument, but it's probably clear from the legislative history of the law that it's meant to protect people who are on visas, not people who aren't.
Also, she would probably say that her rule is that she only rents to people who have an extremely compelling reason to leave after 1-2 years. Compelling reasons include time-limited positions (postdocs) or visa restrictions.
>Everyone wants to call themselves a liberal or progressive nowadays, it's bizarre.
Thats just the scam the corporate left likes to play. They love to be super "progressive" while actually performing nothing progressive other than performance art.
It costs nothing to call yourself "progressive". Hell I bet Trump has probably called himself "progressive" ha ha.
Like you said, its actions that matter. If you look at that, essentially the elected progressives in this country trend towards 0.
I read this more as an indication that "liberal" philosophy is at best hypocritical (liberals "want things" (e.g. free education/housing) as long as they don't have to pay/work for it themselves) and at best contradictory (e.g. "open borders" while at the same time "social security").
I know a landlord with a 4 unit rent controlled building in SF. As tenants leave, the units are left empty. Some units have been empty for 3+ years now.
Why? Because she is retiring and an empty building will sell for several hundred thousand more than one with tenants - giving up $300k in rent over a few years is an easy trade off when she can sell the whole building for $600k more.
Do you mean “liberal” the way progressives use it (i.e., center-right pro-corporate capitalist) or “liberal” the way conservatives use it (i.e., left of the Republican Party, with more liberal = more left)?
Interestingly, she is very YIMBY and liberal, and even has a PhD in urban planning. But no one wants a forever tenant!