Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: screening prospective members

[Elizabeth Magill (pastorlizm]

The only legal limits to discrimination in housing are based on the
Fair Housing Act which prohibits discrimination in housing because of:
Race, Color, National Origin, Religion, Sex (including gender identity
and sexual orientation), Familial Status (that is, the presence of
children), and Disability. (Some states may have additional protected
classes.)
https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/fair_housing_act_overview#_What_Types_of

You can legally discriminate based on a CORI check, or other reasons,
if you want to.

I suppose you could pretend that you aren't selling housing when you
create your LLC, but it seems pretty obvious that *is* what you are
doing and the person you discriminate against would have a pretty good
case that you refused to sell them housing.

The question is, why do you want to? What will it accomplish?
I suggest finding the thread on background checks that just happened
on this list recently, for opinions on that.

We at Mosaic Commons, in Berlin, MA, found it better to have ways for
a potential member to get to know us, and for them to screen
themselves in or out based on knowing us.

-Liz
(The Rev. Dr.) Elizabeth Mae Magill
Pastor, Ashburnham Community Church
Minister to the Affiliates, Ecclesia Ministries
www.elizabethmaemagill.com
508-450-0431

On Tue, Apr 12, 2022 at 4:30 PM Jim Bronson <jimbronsonashland [at] gmail.com> 
wrote:
>
> From: regine <chknsoup1 [at] aol.com>
> To: <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Subject: Re: [C-L]_ New Member process - Background checks and
>         references
> Message-ID: <1254684162.603519.1649705929437 [at] mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
>  I don?t think you can legally control who buys a house in the community.
> Regine
>
> I think you are correct when you are selling real estate, but I believe you
> can discriminate and do background checks when you are pre-HOA and are
> adding members to the LLC.  I'm sure others will know for sure.  Jim
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