Episode 57: Advertising without Discrimination

Summary

As a landlord, at some point you will have to advertise!  Today's episode is how to advertise your US or Canadian rental unit without discrimination.  Looking at both sides of the border, we discuss specific wording in your advertising, what happens if you do discriminate in your ads (and how would you know), and how to avoid discrimination in your advertisements.  There are FIVE resources on the website for today's episode, all to help keep you out of discrimination trouble. 

Listen to full episode :

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Episode Links and Other info:

Resources for todays episode: Quebec's website "for rent without discrimination"  ⁠Rent without discrimination | CDPDJ⁠

Fair Housing Advertising words and phrases list - acceptable and unacceptable - "Fair Housing Advertising Words Phrases"

Part 109 Fair Housing Advertising

US HUD Office of Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Housing

Ontario Human Rights Commission "discrimination in rental ads"  ⁠Landlords beware: crackdown on discrimination in rental ads - MoneySense

Full Episode Transcription

Welcome to my life as a landlord where we untangle all things housing and educate the curious. If you're

looking for some entertainment with some honest, awkward conversations, you've come to the right

show. I'm your host, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury. This is my life as a landlord. Welcome to it.

Well. Hello there. All my Life is a landlord. Listeners, thank you so much for joining me today. I am Doctor Jen

and today's episode 57 advertising Without discrimination.

Oh my goodness. This is such an amazing topic that if you do it

wrong or you don't even realize you're doing it wrong, it could really cause some serious problems. 1s As

we all know, providing housing. You have to advertise for your rental units, right? But many landlords

don't advertise properly. They actually discriminate which which is a big no no. And you may very likely

may not be realizing you're doing you're doing discrimination in your advertising ads for your rental

property. This goes for both U.S. and Canadian landlords. So this is both sides of the border. I have

actually researched both sides of the border, um, discrimination for advertising. This is chock full of

resources and information for you. Specifically, we're going to discuss the wording that is in your rental

advertising that is discriminatory, which you may not even realize is discriminatory. What happens if you

commit the discrimination in your advertising? How would you even know that you did it? And then how

to avoid it altogether, which is the whole point. You don't want to discriminate in your advertisements.

So let's jump into this. Uh, what constitutes discrimination in a rental advertisement? Uh, let's start with

Canada. And then the US will do that next. Okay, so Canada has something called the Canadian Charter

of Human Rights and Freedoms. And I just went to a random province. I just went to Quebec just to say,

you know, how does Quebec view the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms? And actually,

Quebec has a pretty incredible toolbox on their website. Um, it's called for rent without discrimination.

And wow, it's got just tons of resources and tools both for landlords and tenants. I've included the

hyperlink on the website for you to check out. Uh, for my Canadian landlords if you want to check. But

the whole idea here is, is that the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms has 14 personal

characteristics that are prohibited grounds of discrimination. Here they are. This is quite the list. Race,

color, sex, gender identity or gender expression. Pregnancy. Sexual orientation. Civil status which is the

presence of children, age, religion, political convictions, language, ethnic or national origin. Social

condition which includes your occupation, income, whether you're on assistance or not, education and or

homelessness and disability is is the 14th characteristic. As I mentioned, if you want to see more of this,

uh, go to the hyperlink, the Quebec hyperlink to the Canadian Charter of Human Rights. And the Quebec

website is actually pretty impressive. So check that out. But let's jump to the US side. That's the Canadian

side. Let's jump to the US side. If we're talking about the Fair Housing Act, it is very similar to the

Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms when it comes to discrimination, fair Housing Act in

the US, very similar. And I've also put a PDF attachment for Fair Housing Act part 109, which is

advertisements that includes discriminatory words. You cannot discriminate based on. This is a very

similar list, but the Canadians do it a lot more. Uh, just a lot more words, uh, for the personal

characteristics they use 14 on the US side, they use nine. But you're going to see when they expand the

nine. The two lists are almost identical. But here it is. Fair Housing Act Part 109. Advertisement.

Discriminatory prohibitions race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status such as having children,

same thing, national origin. And then they go into detail on all of this. So, uh, words describing the

dwelling or landlord tenants, uh, like white private home, colored homes, Jewish home, Hispanic

residents. That kind of wording is not permitted. Words indicative of race, color, religion, sex, handicap,

familial status or national origin. Now race, color, religion, sex. Uh, when it comes to sex, it is interesting

that the Canadian. Documentation talks more of gender identity, gender expression and then sexual

orientation is a different list. This one just says sex. But then it comes to handicap familial status or

national origin. I found this pretty interesting because in the Fair Housing Act, when it came to

handicapped, which you're not allowed to use things, the words like crippled, blind, deaf, mentally ill,

retarded, impaired, handicapped, physically fit. Those are direct words out of part 109 Fair Housing Act.

Not my words. And it says right after this. Nothing in this part restricts the inclusion of the information

about the availability of the accessibility of the housing. Right? So when you're talking about, um,

advertising for a rental fair housing unit, part 109 is talking about. Just talk more about the

accessibility of the unit instead of all of these identifying words that are discriminatory. Okay, let's go to

the next one. Familial status. Adults, children, singles, mature persons. You're not allowed to say any of

that. Um, but you can say. Um, when you're advertising for dwellings which are intended for, uh,

operated for occupancy of older persons, there is a different part in the Fair Housing Act that is all about,

um, housing older folks. And so you can't say adults, children, you can't actually say that that's

discriminating in the Fair Housing Act. Advertisements. And then this is very interesting. On the Fair

Housing Act by the US side, it says no catch. Words, words and phrases used in discriminatory context

should be avoided. For example, restricted. Exclusive. Private. Integrated. Traditional board approval.

Membership approval. 1s Uh, and also the Fair Housing Act goes into something that's very different. It

doesn't always talk about the words in the advertisement. They talk about how the unit is advertised in

the Fair Housing Act. This is very unique. So you've got you've got to be careful on where you are

advertising your units, such as certain demographics, uh, certain billboards in certain areas, certain

brochures that are distributed in specific areas. 1s Furthermore, they talk about the equal Opportunity

logo in the Fair Housing Act. I'm not going to go into that now, but what's really interesting is they were

talking about how you are using human models in advertising campaigns. You cannot stereotype models

of one sex persons without children. Um, certain demographics. You can't do that. It's really interesting.

Now, I never thought of this because where my rentals are relatively small towns, you know, the, um, the

search engines that I use, the, the newspaper I put ads in, it's sort of all encompassing. It's not like I'm

putting up a billboard in one specific neighborhood. Uh, and so it's interesting. So especially if you are in

a bigger metropolis, you've got to be careful on where you're placing your ad campaigns. That can be

discriminative if you are geographic specific or you're using certain demographics to use as your

advertisements. Very interesting. Fair Housing Act talks about that. Um, the Canadian Charter of Human

Rights and Freedoms, uh, was is talking more about just discrimination, um, prohibited grounds of

discrimination. Very interesting how this is all worked, but it's, uh, it's a little bit different, but read it for

yourself. Go to the website Fair Housing Act Part 109. It's a PDF on the website. Also super, super

impressive. Fair Housing Act has created a list of words that you can use in your advertisement that are

that are accepted and not accepted. This is so cool! I'm so happy that they did this. This is super easy. I

have put this whole thing on the website. This is a two page PDF first page. It says on the top it says fair

housing advertising words and phrases left acceptable. It's all in blue. It's everything that you're allowed

to use. There's a couple asterisks when you're talking about older folks. This is the neatest thing. And it

just it sort of gives you a roadmap on what to do, which is great, but it also talks about unacceptable

words to pager. Take a look. This is great PDFs on the website. It really sets you up for success in

certain ways, which is great. But let's jump back to Canada for a moment. Um, talking more about I just

went again. I'm trying to integrate more Canadian items. Even though the Canadian documents in the US

documents are almost identical. And the Canadian province of Ontario. The Ontario Human Rights

Commission has phrases from landlords that inadvertently suggest that the landlord prefers certain types

of people, which is an act of discrimination. Here are some examples. This is really interesting in it, I

guarantee you open up any newspaper. You will see these phrases all over looking for this and they may

not be obvious, which is people may not intend to do this. Ideal for quiet couple. Suitable for single

professional. Perfect for female student search suits. Mature individual or couple. Great for working folks

or adults, not soundproof which may indicate a bias against families or children and no pets. Exceptions

apply, but you need to know when or where. So this is very interesting because pets, as many of my

listeners know, this is a white hot subject when you're talking about pets versus emotional support

animals versus service animals, and whether or not you can allow pets or not allow pets, you've got to

know your specific geographic area and how this all works for where your rentals are, not where you are,

where your rentals are. Okay, let's keep going. Overt discrimination still prohibited and includes

rejection. If a if the rejection of a potential tenant receipt of public assistance like welfare employment

insurance can't reject people on that race, color, ethnic origin. This is an interesting one. Age,

including 16 or 17 year olds who are independent of their parents. Let's stop here for a second. I have

done this many, many times where I have a first time renter, brand new tenant and I am their basically

their teaching landlord. Now some people say, well Jen, I don't want a project. Okay, fair enough. But it's

an opportunity for me to train and to teach them how a landlord should be and how a tenant should be

and what they should expect in communication and maintenance for their unit and how they should

uphold their unit. So I have no problem with a local co-signer and how I do this. So we do not

discriminate, which we're not allowed to, but we're not allowed to discriminate. But there is a specific

way on how I do this, and I'm going to do a future podcast on how I do this. I actually enjoy doing it

because it includes the family, which is cool. Okay, let's jump back again. Overt discrimination still

prohibited. Uh, familial status. You cannot reject marital status, including people with common law or

same sex partners. You cannot reject based on ancestry, including people of Aboriginal descent. You

can't reject based on sex, including pregnancy or gender identity, religious beliefs or practices, place of

origin, sexual orientation, disability, citizenship, including refugee status. All very interesting. So and

here's the trick. There is a couple of big asterisks here which makes this topic so confusing. Some of

these are different. If it is a roommate situation. Everything I'm talking about is if it's an independent

unit, that's typically if you're listening to my podcast, typically you are probably renting independent

units. However, if this is a roommate situation where this is going to be a shared bathroom, shared

kitchen with the landlord, with you as the landlord, that is different. So I'm just going to put that out

there. I don't want to confuse the situation, but as I was doing this research, that was a big asterisks there.

1s Okay. Um. 1s Here we go. Words and phrases that are not discriminatory okay, so this can be a very

interesting thing. So let's jump back on the US side from housing and urban development, fair housing

and equal opportunity advertisements which I love this term. Facially neutral design facially neutral. 1s

Yeah, it is interesting because I guess fair housing has gotten complaints over the uses of phrases such as

quote unquote, rare, find desirable, neighborhood mother in law, sweet bachelor apartment. They're

talking that these are these complaints are not valid. They're not discriminatory because that's describing

the unit describing the area of the unit. But essentially, again, as we move forward on this advertising,

describing the properties such as two bedroom, cozy family room, uh, services and facilities or, you

know, no bicycles allowed or quiet streets. They're not, again, facially discriminatory. I love that that, uh,

adverb facially discriminatory and do not violate Fair Housing Act. Okay, so there's a whole bunch of

resources on this. Um, that's just what the discrimination aspect looks like. That's what the wording looks

like. But what happens if you commit discriminatory advertising? There's what what happens what? So

let's talk about what the violations are. Now as I was researching this, I stumbled upon a website called

door.com. Now, I am not a paid advertiser of door com, but it seems that there's an attorney there called

David Bitan, and he does a very interesting, concise way to understand some of this confusing stuff. So if

you're interested check out door.com. I guarantee it's going to be a resource I use again. But he describes

three potential violations in discriminating in your advertisements. And so let's go through these three,

um, explicit violations used to be uh, they used to be extremely common before the Fair Housing Act was

would created. And they're exactly what I had said before encompasses the language, direct language that

clearly states members of certain classes, certain ethnic areas, um, ethnic background are not welcome

based on familial status, national origin, or any of the above mentioned characteristics. For example, a

violation may use phrasing like white housing, Jewish home, no children allowed, men's housing only

things like that. He also comments that it's rare to see these kinds of violations nowadays, although some

landlords do still describe their buildings as children free. 1s But he makes the comment that you're more

likely to inadvertently violate the Housing and Urban Development guidelines in one of the following

two ways. And by the way, I know I'm reading from HUD and this is a US website, but I can tell you that

the Canadian side is very similar. So I'm going to challenge you that if you got a question, then you need

to research it in your local area. But very interesting. So explicit violations is the first one. There's two

more violations by omission. And then the third one is implicit violation. So let's go violation by

omission. So this is the easiest one to make without realizing that you've done it. So it's the easiest

discrimination that you can do in advertising. And what happens is you fail to include you fail to make

your rental units equally available to the members of different classes in the same income range. So, for

example, a violation by omission may look like this. Failing to make advertisements available in French.

Even though you live in a multilingual community right back. There's two national languages in Canada

that could happen advertising, and only select geographic areas, such as placing your ads in

neighborhoods predominantly home to a single ethnic group, or only using equal housing opportunity

logo in some of your advertisements. So that's very common. And if you are in Eastern Canada, that

could be applicable to you. So be careful now to have actually a violation of this type. To show

discrimination you typically have to show a pattern of offenses. In order for there to be fines, but you

need to make sure you understand the difference. He even has one example in here, for example, not

making any of your ads available in French, maybe a violation, but failing to translate 1 or 2 ads may not

be one. So take a look. If you're in a bilingual or multilingual place, that may apply. Okay, the third

violation type when you know how would you even know that you've committed discrimination? Your

advertisements. Implicit violations are those that occur without the use of explicit discriminatory

language. Okay. Well, it's it's even more confusing. For example, you can be guilty of an implicit hub

violation, uh, advertising guidelines by only showing advertisements featuring a certain ethnic group.

And this goes back to posters, commercials, brochures using coded language that shows a clear

preference for members of certain religious groups. For example, an excessively highlighting features

that make uh disabled residents less likely to apply. Interesting. The point of this category is that housing

and urban development doesn't want landlords to try to get around fair housing guidelines by using coded

language and practices instead of being explicit. These can be just as severe from a legal standpoint as

just explicit discrimination. So you want to be careful. You don't want to. You don't want to code things

up. So how would you know if you discriminated in your advertising? How would you even know? I

mean, if you're doing if you're if you're actually advertising and you're discriminating in your

advertisements. And you don't realize it, how would you actually know? Okay, well, you might get a flag

on your advertising method online i.e Craigslist, Facebook. Something else may quote unquote flag the

ad. Right. And this has happened on Craigslist. There's been in fact this happened one time we were

looking for a quote unquote cleaning lady. We put this ad up, didn't even think about it. We got flagged

on Craigslist and we went, what did we do wrong? We looked at scoured, scoured, scoured through the

whole job description, the scope of work. What were we doing? It was the word lady cleaning person.

We didn't even realize it. And this is where we went. Okay, it got flagged. Let's fix it. And as soon as we

fix it, put cleaning person, put the ad back up. Didn't get flagged so we didn't even realize it. Wow. Okay,

so you might get a flag like that. You could potentially get a notice of complaint from the Housing and

Urban Development if you're in the United States, or you might get a notice from your state or province

or territories third party regarding civil rights. Okay. What would that look like? And then if you do get

one of those, then what? Okay, in the US, if you violate HUD's guidelines and commit discriminatory

advertising, a few things can happen. First, you may be legally required to rent the. So let's let's go down

this I'm starting to read this, but let's talk about this scenario. Let's say you're discriminated. You don't

even realize you're discriminated or you're talking a code and language in your ads, or you've put them

in, you've committed some kind of discriminatory act in your advertisement. So the first thing that may

happen is you still may be legally required to rent the unit. Against or to the individual that was

discriminated against, you still may be legally liable to rent to them, however. Because of this, they may

not want to take the unit, which is understandable, unfortunately. What's more likely to happen is that

you will be required to pay damages to the person who successfully sued you for discriminatory

advertising, and that may include pain and suffering, cost of renting a hotel or other temporary housing

due to the rejection or not able to rent your unit. That may also include attorney's fees and other charges

stemming from the discriminatory incident. Bottom line is that you're likely going to have to pay a fair

amount of money if found guilty, and this is likely to be super stressful. I see on Facebook both sides of

the border, that there's all kinds of stress going on when dealing with tenants, with evictions, with trying

to get their money back, dealing with trashed units. This type of event is, I would say, equally as stressful

just because you've got to be involved and, you know, it's it's stressful, but this one is completely

avoidable. Okay. In Canada. Oh, I had mentioned in Canada, you might be you might get a letter from a

third party state province, territories, third party regarding civil rights. Uh, for example, um BC Civil

Rights Tribunal or Ontario Human Rights Commission, which I mentioned, for example, uh, but it's

location dependent in Canada. But here's the trick. How do you avoid all of this, right. How do you avoid

the stress? How do you avoid, um, just any of these violations? How do you do it? Right. Okay. Here it

is. The rule of thumb for avoiding discriminatory advertising is to market the property and amenities. Not

the people you think should live in it. Right. I'll say it again. Market the property and its

amenities. Only. Not the people you think should live in it. If you do. That will likely avoid

discriminatory anything in your advertisements. 1s Rental advertising best practices includes attracting

the right tenants for your property and in your advertisements you describe the unit, not the tenant. Use

the Fair Housing Acts list of acceptable words and advertising. And I can tell you there's three columns

of words. There's easily 60 words that you can put in here. 1s List the rent, size of apartment amenities

and other appealing features of the property. Not the ideal person or people that you think should reside

in that unit. Now I'm going to do a whole podcast on how to properly market your unit. And guess what?

None of it will be on who you think the tenants should be. It's all about marketing the unit, so there's lots

of spin off podcasts from today. Oh my goodness. Wow. This has been a lot of information. But here we

go. As we conclude today's podcast, we discussed many aspects of advertising your rental without

discrimination. I talked on both sides of the border, both the US and Canada's discriminatory specific

wording in your rental advertisements. What happens if you do commit a discriminatory advertising

campaign? How would you even know? And then how to avoid it? Uh, discrimination. In your

advertisements, there are five resources on the website. My life as a landlord.com for you to take a look

at, either by hyperlink or by PDFs. Please go and see these resources. Download them, especially the Fair

Housing list of acceptable and not acceptable words in advertising your rentals. That is absolutely key.

So here's your call to action. Call to action to all my landlords, US and Canadian landlords. Here we go.

Check your advertisements and your ad campaign. With everything that I just discussed, with all the

resources that are on the website, it is easy that you can make mistakes. But check yourself. You have a

whole laundry list of things to look at now that you can actually correct your own advertisements. If you

are a landlord and you've you've been a landlord for a long time and you have, let's say you have cookie

cutter, um, ads for your different units that you have. And when some when someone gives notice that

they're going to depart, you just cut and paste and put it back in. Well check those, make sure they're

okay. Make sure you're not inadvertently speaking in coded wording or, you know, describing the tenants

that are going to be in there. Make sure that you're not doing that. Um, the other thing that you can do.

Especially if you've got multiple layers of tenancy law. So if you've got let's say you're in the state of

Washington and then the city of Seattle, you have several layers of tenancy items that tenancy documents

that you need to go through. So make sure you're in compliance with all of those. Also, if you've got

questions on the discriminatory wording, if you have questions whether you're in Canada or US, there is

a local not legal aid society or local nonprofit or a third party, either mediation or arbitration. One of

those one of those items will apply in your area somewhere. One of those. Call them and ask them

questions about how you should advertise your rental. They don't want you to mess this up. They

want you to use them as a resource. So make sure that you are educating yourself in your specific area.

Okay, so that's your call to action day. Check your ads. Educate yourself. Who? Let me know your

comments and questions by emailing me at learn at my life as a landlord.com. Questions and comments.

Create the next podcast and resources. Also, I am on the hunt for really great guests. 2024 is going to be

all about guests, so if you know of a really great guest that I should have on the show, there is a podcast

guest application on the website as well. I'm always looking for dynamic guests to bring the value to all

of you. Don't forget the resources on the website, including all the ways to invest in your continuing

landlord education. Check out My Life as a landlord for more details. Join me for next week's podcast

where I interview my podcast coach. Episode number 58 starting a podcast with Sydney Young. I will see

you there.

Thank you for joining us this week. To view the complete show notes

and all the links mentioned in today's episode, visit our website at www.mylifeasalandlord.com. If you're

looking for educational resources for getting into real estate investing, becoming a landlord, or even a

better tenant, then I have a page on my website to get you started looking for a solution to the pickle that

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Thank you again for joining me, Dr. Jennifer Salisbury in this episode of My Life as a Landlord. I'll see you next time.