Apartment Listing Sites to be Sued?

August 14th, 2009 by Matt DiChiara| Posted in Political Corner | No Comments »

Wednesday’s headline at Multifamily Executive was “Fair Housing Activists Put Multifamily ILSs on Notice.” The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) claims that some ILSs are running ads that discourage families with children from applying and thereby violate the Fair Housing Act. They released a report on Monday on the subject and are recommending that the Communications Decency Act of 1996 be amended in order to close a loophole that currently does not hold online publishers liable for ads.

The NFHA has been very active on the issue; earlier this summer, along with the Fair Housing Council of Central California, they sued American Classifieds, LLC for publishing housing ads that discriminate against families with children. Seemingly, they won’t be able to go after ILSs until after the loophole in the aforementioned Communications Decency Act, which does not include online publications, is closed.
The NFHA press release cited these as examples of Internet housing advertisements discriminating against families with children and with other illegal preferences:

• 2BR: “Mature couple or single with no children” Brooklyn, NY
• 3BR: Duplex: “Christian atmosphere” Evansville, IN
• 2BR: “PERFECT FOR 2 ADULTS…..seeking a maximum of 2 tenants” New Haven, CT
• 2BR: “Couples preferred” Chicago, IL

A few years ago, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law Inc. sued Craigslist under the Fair Housing Act for the user generated discriminatory ads on that site. A judge granted Craigslist’s motion for judgment in that case, claiming protection under the very legal loophole the NFHA now wants to rectify.
Although Craigslist won the suit and continued with their hands-off policy, leaving the flagging of inappropriate content to users, ILSs embrace the spirit of the Fair Housing and Communications Decency Act of 1996.

MyNewPlace, for example, has a system in place that monitors the descriptions that clients submit for the property descriptions. We have a program that identifies problematic phrases and words, and although most of the time the alerts are false-positive, this keeps our site in line with the letter and objectives of the Fair Housing Act.