Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: More-equal Housing

[SPINTUS (SPINTUS]

On Mon, 23 Jan 1995 biow [at] cs.UMD.EDU wrote:

> Rob Sandelin followed up:
> 
> >One way to select membership from a particular set of humanity is to
> >advertise in ways which will attract the set you are looking for.  For
> >example, if you are looking for families with kids, then advertise in
> >parenting magazines and such.  Our local baby diaper service has a
> >newspaper on parenting which accepts advertising.
> 
> Rob, I know you didn't really mean what you said.
> 
> But please don't even say that--at least not without an anonymous 
> account. Advertising in such a way as to implicitly select 
> against a protected group of people *is* a direct violation of 
> Fair Housing law. Virtually the only remaining general exception 
> is for discrimination in favor of the elderly. And I don't even 
> know if we could do that in a community that is not exclusively 
> for the elderly.
> 
Chris, you don't really mean that we can't ADVERTISE in certain 
publications, do you?  Surely, it's an issue of discriminating against 
people who are interested in joining the group, not against who we 
broadcast to?  Otherwise, we'll probably have Newt Gingrich after us 
right away.  We don't put flyers in right-wing places....

Susan Pintus, Cornerstone Cohousing