Rental market wired for discrimination

I have shared this article all over the place. This article provides some interesting statistics on what Fair Housing testers are finding out. It touches specifically on Fair Housing violation in the electronic market. How are you keeping your internet marketing in line with the Fair Housing Act?

www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/...ome&position=emailed

seems like it got a lot of peoples feathers ruffled :woohoo: . I was reading the comments on the article's site...

Person 1

"Maybe some renters have had serious issues with minority tennants in the past and they want to avoid similar issues in the future. Why is that so hard to accept?"

Person 2 Response-
"LOL you're having the wrong argument. IT'S VERY EASY TO ACCEPT that some landlords are deliberately avoiding some races and ethnicities because they want to avoid a bad experience. That's sort of the whole point here. The problem is that 1) It's illegal, and 2) It doesn't even make sense because not renting to minorities DOES NOT LOWER YOUR RISK OF HAVING A BAD TENANT. Doing background checks is how you lower your risk."

I agree.

A few months back our marketplace appeared to be teaming with testers. Some of them are quite obvious, especially if you have been in the business very long. In spite of the initial anxiety, I'm really glad to have had this experience.

We benefited by having opportunity to further discuss the historical "why's" of the stringent laws. The sharing of the war stories of our industry, from one generation to the next, really bonded our team and had great impact. We were also motivated to standardize our follow up procedures, which actually has resulted in company-wide highest overall occupancy and income!

Many moons ago (hate to say it, but maybe 1989...ARG), as a young property manager, I remember sitting at an Anne Sedovsky workshop when she said, "Treat anyone poorly, for any reason, and you create more and more protected classes. Treat everyone consistently and honorably, and watch your revenue skyrocket."

Anne was right, then. She's even more right, now.

To honorable consistency with ALL!