Screening a tenant without stepping into a fair housing problem

The strongest tenant screening process is also the most boring one: published criteria, applied identically to every applicant, documented every time. Federal fair housing law prohibits discrimination based on protected characteristics, and state and local law can add more. The risk is rarely a landlord intending to discriminate. It is inconsistency — a rule bent for one applicant and enforced against another — which is exactly what a complaint needs to look like a pattern. Write the criteria down before advertising: income relative to rent, credit thresholds, rental history, and how criminal history is considered, applied case by case rather than as a blanket bar. Publish them. Apply them in the order applications arrive. Two practical cautions. Requests related to disability sit under a different framework — reasonable accommodations and modifications, including assistance animals, which are not pets and are not subject to pet fees. And advertising language matters: describing who a property would "suit" can describe a protected class without meaning to. Consumer reporting rules apply too. Pulling a report requires a permissible purpose and authorisation, and denying an applicant based on one triggers an adverse action notice telling them which agency supplied it. The paperwork is not bureaucracy for its own sake. A landlord with written criteria and a file per applicant can show exactly why a decision was made. A landlord without them is explaining from memory a year later. This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Rules change and every deal is different — check your own case with a licensed professional. Alberto Zaltzberg — Adonait · adonait.com