August 2025 Coach's Quiz
QUESTIONS
1. Your community has a no-pets policy. A disabled student and army veteran who relies on an assistance dog to help her with post-traumatic stress disorder fills out a rental application. You screen her and find that she owes her former landlord thousands of dollars in unpaid rent and has a very poor credit report. Must you rent her an apartment?
a. Yes, because exempting a disabled tenant’s assistance animals from a no-pets policy is a legally required accommodation
b. Yes, but only if veteran status is a protected class in your jurisdiction
c. No, as long as you consistently reject other applicants with inadequate credit and rental history
Click to show the answer
a. Yes, because exempting a disabled tenant’s assistance animals from a no-pets policy is a legally required accommodation
b. Yes, but only if veteran status is a protected class in your jurisdiction
c. No, as long as you consistently reject other applicants with inadequate credit and rental historyAnswer: c
Reason: Pitfalls #6 and #7 apply here:
Pitfall #6: Deviating from Your Standard Rental Screening Processes
Pitfall #7: Not Making Reasonable Accommodations for Disabled Students’ Assistance Animals
You don’t have to rent to any person who’s unqualified, as long as you perform screening and apply legitimate, nondiscriminatory criteria consistently with all applicants regardless of disability, race, etc. Rental and credit history are recognized as legitimate, nondiscriminatory qualifications for landlord use in selecting tenants. Thus, as long as you apply those criteria consistently, you don’t have to rent to disabled veterans with unacceptable credit and rental history. So, c is the right answer.
Wrong answers explained:
a. This answer conflates the rules governing pre-rental screening and accommodation of assistance animals. Make sure your leasing staff don’t make the same mistake. If you legitimately determine that an applicant is unqualified, you don’t have to rent to her and the question of accommodating her disability becomes moot.
b. The reason b. is wrong is that being a member of a protected class doesn’t exempt applicants from screening. It just means you can’t treat them less favorably because of their protected characteristic(s), in this case, disability and perhaps military status. But you can still reject an applicant if she doesn’t meet your legitimate screening criteria.
2. A policy to deliberately not rent to students is most likely to be considered discriminatory under which of these circumstances (assume the community is in a town where local fair housing law doesn’t list student status as a protected class):
a. Your property is located in a college town
b. Your property is located in a town where there’s a local HBCU (Historically Black College or University)
c. You base your policy on the assumption that students make noise, damage property, and don’t reliably pay rent
Click to show the answer
a. Your property is located in a college town
b. Your property is located in a town where there’s a local HBCU (Historically Black College or University)
c. You base your policy on the assumption that students make noise, damage property, and don’t reliably pay rent
Click to show the answerAnswer: b
Reason: Pitfall #1 applies here:
Pitfall #1: Adopting a “No-Student” Rental Policy
Denying housing to applicants because they’re students wouldn’t constitute direct discrimination in a jurisdiction where student status isn’t a protected class under fair housing laws. We know that this is the case under federal and all 50 state fair housing laws. We also know that the community in this scenario is located in a city where student status isn’t a protected class under the local fair housing law.
But considering whether there’s direct discrimination is only the start of the inquiry. Categorically refusing to rent to students may still constitute indirect discrimination against students who have other personal characteristics that are protected, e.g., students who are Black, disabled, foreign nationals, have at least part-time custody of a child, etc. While it may seem neutral on its face, a no-students policy in a town with a local HBCU institution may have the effect of discriminating against Black renters. The same reasoning could apply to religious and single-sex universities. So, b is the right answer.
Wrong answers explained:
a. Being located in a college town doesn’t automatically make a no-students policy illegal, especially in a town that doesn’t list students as a protected class. However, such a policy could still have a disparate impact on groups the fair housing laws do protect to the extent that the schools in that market are attended solely or primarily by students whose personal characteristics are a protected class. For example, refusing to rent to college students may be deemed a form of racial discrimination in a town where the only college is an HBCU institution.
c. This may sound right because it’s based on stereotypes about students, and fair housing laws generally ban making decisions on the basis of stereotyping. The reason c. is wrong is that while it may be unfair and ignorant, stereotyping violates fair housing law only when it targets the specific group(s) the applicable fair housing laws list as a protected class. Since student status isn’t such a protected class in this scenario, deliberately excluding students based on stereotypes about students isn’t a fair housing violation.
3. You welcome students to your apartment community and offer by-the-bed leasing options. You currently have a few apartments available with either male or female tenants assigned to them, with at least one vacant bedroom in each apartment. You also have a fully vacant two-bedroom apartment. Two unrelated students, one male and one female, ask to live together in a two-bedroom apartment. What should you do?
a. Require the male student to choose one of the apartments with male roommates and the female to choose one of the apartments with female roommates
b. Decline to rent to these applicants together unless they’re married
c. Rent to these applicants only if they sign a traditional joint lease for the two-bedroom apartment
d. Document the applicants’ consent to a mixed-gender apartment and offer them each by-the-bed contracts, and assign them to the vacant two-bedroom apartment together if they request it
Click to show the answer
a. Require the male student to choose one of the apartments with male roommates and the female to choose one of the apartments with female roommates
b. Decline to rent to these applicants together unless they’re married
c. Rent to these applicants only if they sign a traditional joint lease for the two-bedroom apartment
d. Document the applicants’ consent to a mixed-gender apartment and offer them each by-the-bed contracts, and assign them to the vacant two-bedroom apartment together if they request it
Click to show the answerAnswer: d
Reason: Pitfalls #4 and #5 apply here:
Pitfall #4: Steering
Pitfall #5: Roommate Segregation Practices
With individual leases and shared kitchen or bath facilities, assignments of applicants to specific apartments based on gender/sex is allowed, provided that the other tenants in the specific apartment have previously expressed an expectation to be matched only with same-gender roommates, or if they have indicated no preference. But, where the applicants have asked for a mixed-gender assignment, and particularly where they have identified roommate(s) to fill an apartment, there’s no basis for steering these applicants to apartments they didn’t ask for based on their being of different genders.
Wrong answers explained:
a. It would be fine to offer each of these individual students the ability to be roommate-matched into an apartment with other tenants matching their respective genders, but not to require them to agree to such a match as a condition of leasing to them if they’ve already asked for a mixed-gender apartment.
b. Marital status shouldn’t be a consideration in leasing or in roommate matching. In some jurisdictions, marital status is a protected class and even asking about this status could be considered housing discrimination.
c. Requiring a joint lease for an entire apartment is one way to avoid gender-based roommate matching entirely. But if your community offers by-the-bed leases and the applicants have already asked for a mixed-gender assignment, requiring different leasing/contract terms could appear to be discrimination on the basis of sex/gender.
