Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Fair Housing Law: was: [C-L]_Encouraging Multigenerational Community

[Diane Margolis (diane]

I'm not an attorney, but my understanding of fair housing legislation is
just that you can make some choices about the mix in your community
especially when your goal is diversity; you cannot descriminate against
protected groups.  Here at Cambridge Cohousing we began by actively
recruiting families so that we could achieve a family mix of one-third
families with children under sixteen, one third households with two or more
adults and only one-third single households.
   Raines is right, of course.  Some of the singles in our single households
have found partners and the children get older each year (so do the rest of
us).  So far, through resales we've only lost one household with children
under sixteen that was not replaced with another such, but we are beginning
to feel the need  to once again actively recruit families with young
children.
   Your neighborhood matters.  Cambridge gets more expensive every day and
its public schools create problems for many families -- especially when
there are so many first rate schools in neighboring towns.
    Diane Margolis
Cambridge Cohousing
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Coffin" <jcoffin [at] brown-dog.org>
To: <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 3:44 PM
Subject: Fair Housing Law: was: [C-L]_Encouraging Multigenerational
Community


>
> Raines Cohen <rc2-coho-L [at] raines.com> writes:
>
> > Remember, that discrimination in housing (i.e. unit sales itself) is
> > not legal. You can set requirements for joining your
> > education/social and investment/development group (i.e. the
> > pre-ownership group),
>
> FWIW: Recently, while talking to an attorney about this very issue
> (among other things), she advised me that a court would most likely
> determine that the final intent of the group was clearly housing and
> that the above distinction was not legally valid and risky.  She
> thought that a pre-development group could be sued for discrimination
> under Fair Housing Law even though they weren't actively selling
> housing.
>
> She recommended having a workshop or the like to make all the members
> aware of the legal issues involved and how to be appropriately
> inclusive.
>
>
>
>
> --jeff
>
>
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