Fair Housing Helper for Apartment Professionals

A guide for apartment owners and managers looking to learn about U.S. laws and regulations governing equal housing opportunity.

Lawyer Leshnower (Every Landlord’s Property Protection Guide, 2008) takes a modified Socratic approach to explore the basics and subtleties of the federal Fair Housing Act by writing this book in quiz form, which he describes as an “interactive format that encourages knowledge, participation, and lasting comprehension.” Mostly that’s true. Walking readers through the law, the quiz poses 117 questions on topics from racism to pet policies. Followed by true-or-false or multiple-choice answers, the questions let readers make their best guess and then turn the page to find the correct response. Leshnower covers the basics of the law, including its seven protected classes—race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability and familial status—and more esoteric questions, such as how to handle albinos and how to replace refrigerators without getting into hot water with the feds. The book offers plenty of good advice in plain English. For instance, sometimes it’s best for landlords to keep their mouths shut even if they just want to be helpful; while the FHA treats drug addicts as part of its protected disabled class, it doesn’t afford the same status to recreational-drug users; and though “very often, landlords get into fair housing trouble because they don’t take the same action with all tenants,” exceptions exist—e.g., even though landlords may require all tenants to pay a pet deposit, they must waive the fee for disabled tenants with service animals. Though the quiz format makes learning the law fun and easy to digest, it doesn’t lend itself to quick referencing; a table of contents, index and section headings would have made this book handier for landlords seeking immediate answers for particular problems. Also, though the author points out that even innocently violating the law “can lead to fair housing trouble,” readers want a better idea of exactly what kind of trouble that might be.

A useful, easy-to-read guide for those who want to learn more about complying with U.S. fair housing law.