You Have Questions, We Have Answers—Fair Housing Edition

The New Jersey Realtors® Legal Resource Library is intended to help answer legal questions that arise in your day-to-day business. Browse the library and respective categories at legal.njrealtor.com to see if your question has been answered. If not, submit a new question.

Disclaimer: Answers are current as of date of printing, but please visit legal.njrealtor.com for any updates.

Service Dogs

Are service dogs permitted when a buyer buys a condominium and the condominium association does not permit pets?

An assistance animal, which includes a service animal, is not a pet under the Federal Fair Housing Act (FHA) and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD) and therefore not subject to such a pet policy. A reasonable accommodation must be provided with regard to assistance animals. The reasonable accommodation requirements apply to all housing covered by the FHA regardless of whether the housing is private, public, or receives federal financial assistance. The Assistance Animals Notice applies only to housing, including public and common use areas of housing developments and facilities covered by FHA, including apartments, condominiums, cooperatives, single family homes and other types of housing covered by the FHA. An assistance animal can be a service animal, which must be trained to provide a service, like a seeing eye dog, or can be an animal that will do work, perform tasks, provide assistance and/or therapeutic emotional support for individuals with disabilities, which typically are called support animals. An animal that does not qualify as an assistance animal is subject to the policy concerning pets, including a no pet policy.

Rejecting Lease Applicants Due to Age

A landlord wants to reject a prospective tenant due to old age and the fear that an incident will occur on the premises. Normally I know that age is not a protected class for regular housing. Is it ok for the landlord to reject the tenant in this case?

The NJ Law Against Discrimination (“LAD”) and Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) do not prohibit discrimination on the basis of age in a housing context. Nonetheless, a landlord should be very careful when refusing to rent a dwelling to an individual based on different standards than those they apply to other applicants.

Property Description

An agent ‘s property description included this phrase, “The living area is good for guests or it can be used for your teenage kid”. Is this a Fair Housing violation? Should the description be revised to be inclusive of everyone, not a specific group?

All real estate advertised is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to advertise “any preference, limitation, or discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.”

The same applies under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD), which includes additional protected classes. Under the LAD, it is illegal to discriminate against a prospective or current buyer or tenant because of actual or perceived race, creed/religion, color, national origin, ancestry, marital status, sexual/affectional orientation, domestic partnership status, civil union status, gender, pregnancy and breastfeeding, armed forces, nationality, disability, gender identity or expression, familial status, source of lawful income.

Advertisements should indicate that housing is open to all persons and should not, either directly or indirectly, indicate or suggest a preference or limitation. Advertisements should avoid using descriptions of the dwelling, its tenants, or its neighborhood that refer, either explicitly or implicitly, to protected characteristics.