Would this run afoul of Fair Housing?

Question

A question on fair housing for our legal eagles...

I have a unit which I think is going to turn over soon. First time for me! For various reasons, I'd really like to get a tenant in there who has personal roots/ties in the town I'm in. So I want to really focus on word of mouth. For anyone local who refers a tenant to me, I'll be offering a referral fee of $100 to them personally or $125 to the charity of their choice.

What I wanted to do is talk to the neighbors around the unit, the owner of the local cafes (one of whom is also very involved in the large local Pagan group), maybe the head of the rotary club, and local religious congregation heads about it. I'll also post it to the town's Nextdoor and Facebook page, and the Queer Cleveland buy/sell/trade page.

My question is, could contacting clergy about this be considered discrimination in favor of a religious group? As mentioned, I would be doing the same thing with other groups. Our town is mostly Christian so I would be contacting a few churches, but there's also a Sikh gurdwara here who I would love to contact, and definitely my Pagan buddies would be finding out about it too.

Any thoughts?

Irina Belkofer · Answer

You might have higher rate of vacancy this way.

If you don't advertise it publicly but offer in private, you don't promise anything.

If you do offer the premises for rent publicly, it has to be compliant with Fair Housing law.

It's a slow time in rental business and if you never find who are you looking for, are you willing to take on financial losses because of that?

It's pretty tough now to find a tenant with Craigslist and Zillow leave alone word of mouth

Gwen Fyfe · Answer

I own more than 4 units, so that point is moot, unfortunately.

I had no idea about the fee, though. Huh.

A lot of apartment complexes here give referral fees to their residents. Is there a legal distinction there?

James Wise · Answer

If you own less than 4 units you are exempt from some of the fair housing laws. Bigger issue here would be offering the referral fee. In this context that would be illegal to give to anyone who is not a licensed agent.

Gwen Fyfe · Answer

Oh, I didn't mean that I would ONLY do word of mouth, I would be posting it on craigslist and everything as well. But I really want to do everything I can to get someone local.