The Anatomy of Disparate Impact

Okay, I think we're going to go ahead and get started, and everyone can continue to join. The good news is this is going to be recorded. So, even if someone's coming in a little bit late, they'll have an opportunity to view this later. So, I want to welcome everyone to the anatomy of expert Impact webinar. You know, disparate impact in fair housing can be a tricky concept, and you may be even more confused now, wondering where things stand. In this webinar, our expert panel will break down this important topic for you. What is disparate impact anyway? What can you do to avoid this type of discrimination? We'll help you answer these questions and give you practical information It's a great way to boost your knowledge of this critical area during fair housing month. A few reminders before we get so This webinar will be recorded and shared with you via email and in your vision library. And in order to maximize our time together. All attendees are in listen only mode. Please enter your questions in the Q and A section. Your questions are very important us. And we will be pausing throughout the webinar to answer those questions. And at this time, I'd like to introduce our moderator Dana Hill, Now with Grace Hill, who has served as a multifamily industry leader for many, many years. I shouldn't say many, many, but, you know, we've known each other a long time. And I had the good fortune of meeting Dana. Oh, I don't know, circa nineteen ninety. At first time, we were talking advertising, and we continue to cross paths. I've known her in every job she's had and loved her everywhere she's gone. And so throughout the years, we've attended many apartment, Atlanta, apartment association events. What I love about Dana and why she's so perfect in her current role with us, is that she's passionate and professional and enthusiastic. She's passionate and professional and enthusiastic about her work and her family, and I'm so proud as many I know of you are to call her a friend and a colleague. So, at this time, I'm going to turn the time over to her. Thank you, Lynn. That was wonderful. I'm gonna put you in my pocket and take you everywhere I go. That was really kind and a great introduction. So I need to do the introduction for the incomparable Mike Williams and Nadine Green. And I mean that from the heart. I'm going to share because this is my duty to read off their bio. But give me a little room because I've gotta make this personal to Dana. So I'm gonna share a little bit about Nate Dean that she's not prepared to hear and a little bit about Mike that he might not be prepared to hear. Let's just start with what's written. Nadine Green is a retired attorney who spent decades of her career in multifamily housing at the for the attorney for two legacy vendors, apartment guide, and for rent. During that tenure, many of us came to know her as the fair housing lady because this woman actually did over thirteen hundred presentations all around the country for numerous multifamily management companies. She's written incredible articles, numerous articles, and blogs Yes. Nadine, blogs. And I think her blog had become something that was very critical in our industry where many of our colleagues would say, because I've read that in Nathan's blog, it protected me for making a major faux pas. So she's just been incredible to us during her years within the industry. And look, continues to support us even through retirement. In retirement, she serves on a number of boards and committees for Atlanta area nonprofits. Guys, this woman actually I get to call a friend. You know, they say you know you you'll know the person by their friends. I'm humbled to be able to say that Mike Williams and Nadine Green are friends of mine, as well as incredible colleagues. Nadine doesn't know this but because I had the opportunity to be in the office with her back in our foreign days, she not only mentored me when she didn't know it. But she became my life coach. And her heart, her servant attitude, and her philanthropic spirit inspired me to want to be the same and want to do the same. So I thank you Nadine for that. She's also taught me a little single only child who can tend to be selfish, how to learn not to be so envious and selfish when the spotlight not one her. We shared an office where I saw flowers being delivered to the office every day, and a delivery guy would come straight towards my office and then hang a quick left to go see Nadine. In my jealousy, I started telling people to send me flowers just because. Guess what? That wasn't sustainable because people being brought to send flowers It's not the same when people send them from their heart because they really appreciate what you've done. And so in time, Nadine, I've learned to be gracious and accept that maybe the flowers aren't for me, but it's okay. So thank you for that lesson. We'll go on to talk about my friend, Mike. Mike Williams is a managing attorney for Fowler. Hye, Cheatwood, and Williams. He's been in law practice for over twenty five years. Can't believe that my twenty five. Mike Williams has handled jury and bench trials in defense of fair housing claims and over three hundred fair housing administrative cases across all regions of the country. He provides training and seminars for corporate and on-site management. Frequently speaking at Apartment Association events. Mike Williams, Atlanta based firm acts as general and corporate legal counsel for many local regional and national property management companies, handling litigation, fair housing, landlord tenant matters, employment law, insurance defense, and premise liability. Here's what I need to say about Mike Williams. My friend who when Nadine decided to retire, Of course, we tapped Mike to say, you know, hey, you gotta fill those big shoes. And Mike, I was so worried for you Because we know how well loved Nadine is, and I think what we really appreciate about Nadine is her uncanny wit. You know? Like, it's just you don't expect some of the things that she's gonna say to come out of her mouth. And I think that's her charm. And Tom was like, wow. Mike's gonna have to back that up. Mike did one of the first fair housing webinars on behalf of for rent when I was the general sales manager. And I got to attend And I got to see that guess what? This legal mind right here was doing his homework all along and there was nothing at all for me to fear. He had the audience eating out of his hands and had developed his own incredible wit and savvy that had the teams all asking, when can we get him back? So, Mike, you showed up and you showed out exactly how you were supposed to. And they're gonna do this for us today, guys. This is a a gift from Grace Hill to all of you that are listening in to have these two incredible minds, Nadine coming out of retirement, and Mike serving our industry today to actually take time out of their schedule to be here for us and to really celebrate Fairhousing month, which is April. And we're gonna talk about disparate impact. But one of the things I wanna make sure we're all clear about, guys, this is educational and made These guys are gonna share their wisdom. However, if you are looking for actual legal advice, we implore you to continue to reach out to your company's counsel, your company's legal counsel. Typically, this is where the moderator says, put on your seat belts. No. No. No. This is no time for putting one seat belt. This is time to get in position to catch all of these pearls of wisdom that these two incredible legal minds are going to share with us on the topic of disparate impact. So let's get started. Nadine. How about tell us what is disparate impact? Now, what I'm going to do first is the the sin of all presenters, which is I'm going to actually read that very first slide of mine that has come up. And then, however, I'm going to tell a story, and that story I think will very much help everybody that's listening in with Mike and me today. To better understand the foundation of just what disparate impact is. For lawyers, the definition is this. An unnecessary discriminatory effect on a protected class caused by a practice or policy that appears to be nondiscriminatory. I will tell you and Mike could probably agree with this. We have lawyer friends that even as lawyers, we look at that definition and we go, What does that even say? And so always wanting to be a teacher that is effective I realized that as a lawyer, I can't talk like a lawyer, because then I'd be saying stuff like that. So what I'd like to do next Dana is actually share a story. And that story is about a condition called pseudofoil colitis Barbay. And if you don't think I did have to practice through the years to be -- That's a mouthful. -- at Kavaitis Barbay, I absolutely did. So, I am going to tell you the story of a gentleman, and it's an employment law case. It is not a fair housing case. But Mike and I have talked about this, and we think that the illustration of disparate impact is so well done in that case. That the fact that it's employment doesn't matter. So here's the story. We have a gentleman. He is applying for a pretty high level corporate position with Pete somehow long ago. And he ends up being the number one candidate for that position. He also happens to be an African American. Pizza Hut stands to him. Sir, you are our number one candidate, you win everything to the table that we would like to have in this position. We are so excited to offer the position to you. And then they said the only thing that we need to point out is that Pizza Hut, like many other big companies in today's day and age, remember this base goes back a while. We require everyone that works for us to be clean shaven. No beards, no mustaches. If you're a woman, no chin hairs, whatever it might be, you don't get to have facial hair when you work for Pizza Hut. The gentleman actually sued Pizza Hut. He sued Pizza Hut because the employment law said the disparate impact can be part of employment law. And here was his argument. His argument was you have a policy. The policy is that nobody can work here if they have facial hair. You have that policy for everyone, not just me. However, there is an unintended negative impact on me because of that policy and others like me. The others who are like me are African American, and new eastern men. And we have a condition called pseudofolar colitis barbet. It is a genetic condition, and it means that when we do shave, and this man had, nicely trimmed, very professional, of beer and mustache, he said, but when we do our shaving, what happens is because of the design of our hair follicles, we get infected in the actual pocket that the hair follicle is in the hair follicle is in. And so many of us, with this condition, wear our beards, because we get infected every shade. And he said to Pizza Hut. I know the policies for everyone. I know that you did not intend. To make this a challenge where I couldn't get the job. But the fact is that even though the policy is for everyone applied evenly across the board, we Oops is that some folks, African and middle middle middle African American and Middle Eastern men. Are negatively impacted and therefore would not have this job opportunity. Our gentleman won his case, and the gentleman, therefore, in that case, establish that there can be policies that have a good reason. And back then, the reason was that American Business just expected clean shaven. People are. It can be applied for everyone, the site that we may everybody do it, not just you, but that sometimes we haven't thought about the fact that there may be a person or a group that has protection under laws, like employment laws and fair housing laws that end up being impacted in a way that is not fair. So I hope that that story as Mike and I start will going through the practical aspects of their housing and disparate impact that if you remember that it's all about having a policy that has no intent to discriminate, but that oops, sometimes does have a negative impact on certain beliefs. And so I think that makes it a little bit more understandable than that previous slide. That have the blah, blah, blah, blah, that even re lawyers struggle with that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. And Mike, you guys are incredible at taking these complex ideas and putting them into a way that we all can understand it and then, therefore, most importantly, apply it correctly in our day to day. Thank you for that. All right. And then course, that was Dana as we move on. That was the the case that came out of employment law. And for a long time, there was no disparate impact, consideration, and fair housing. It was all about an intent to do wrong under the fair housing act. You had to mean what you were doing, not oops, what you were doing. The shorthand version was that this issue of whether it should be part of their housing law and on forever. There were three different Supreme Court hearings. About six years ago, the Supreme Court finally decided that disparate impact cases could be brought and could be found to be valid under the Fair Housing Act. And so going back about six years ago, that opened up for Nadine and Mike and other fair housing teachers a whole new area of the law to talk about, which was disparate impact. Thank you so much. So, Mike, tell me How does it work in the courtroom? Well, thank you. I'm a talk a little bit about you know, where we where we came from and give you some real life cases as an example. The case that's up on your screen right now is probably the one that's the most familiar and the one that kinda set it off that Nadine mentioned. That basically says that, you know, you you can't have a valid claim for disparate impact under the Fair Housing And that's the Texas development of housing and community affairs versus communities projects. And it was a Supreme Court decision I've had some good and bad in it. We'll talk a little bit about what that means. And the case, I'm gonna try to keep it very simple. It was about tax credits, being provided to minority developments within minority neighborhoods and not in Caucasian neighborhoods, which preventing minorities from getting moving into those areas under a tax credit property. So as a result, The Texas part of housing community affairs went into litigation. The trial court ruled in favor of the minority developments under the theory that, well, not discriminatory on its face. And then it was appealed to the district court. The district court then affirmed lower court, and it made it to the Supreme Court by Sergio Rory. And interesting enough, the Supreme Court held that the disparate impact focuses on the consequences of the actions in question rather than the actor's intent. So Even though their intent was not to discriminate for providing tax credits, only in minority neighborhoods, The actual effect was, is those it was creating a discriminatory act because minority residents could not move into those Caucasian neighborhoods. The thing that's interesting about that came out of the Texas case, and what I like about it is this is the good part. Is it set the standard that we use today for desperate disparate impact. And what I mean by that is is is the court did set a sort of a high threshold for proving one of these disparate impact cases. And it's specifically held that they must meet a robust, and I'm gonna tell you what that is here in a minute, a robust causality requiring. That means causation. As evidence of racial disparity on its own is not sufficient. So what does this mean? I mean, when I first read, I read the case a couple times, As Nadine said, it came out in twenty fifteen. I was like, what does that really mean? And what it really means is this is is, in essence, the plaintiff has the burden of proof to set out a prima facia case. And then the property management company can then dispute that by showing evidence that it was not discriminatory, that it did not have an discriminatory intent, or that it applied some other means of not providing discriminatory intent. So there must be some causation between the injury alleged and the actual discrimination. And the way that's done, just so you'll know, is through statistics, meaning statistical evidence, and it has to be robust, strong statistical evidence to show that, for example, your policy on criminal background checks, which we'll talk about here in a few minutes, Okay. Has a discriminatory impact on African Americans or Latin Americans or so forth. And so to illustrate that, I'm gonna talk about a case out of the northern district of Georgia, Mitchell versus Presbyterian Home, It was basically an over fifty five community, and those of you that know there's a lot of litigation, a lot of crazy things that happen, at all over fifty five community. NADings and I have had some pretty interesting conversations over the years about issues that come up, Everybody knows when everybody's done. Everybody's trying to date the one man that's on their floor. It's I mean, I can't even begin to tell you the kind of issues that we've seen from over fifty five communities. I had one case where they actually the majority of the building went and got a temporary restraining in order to have a tenant removed who was abusive to all the other residents because we couldn't get the rid executed in time, and the judge granted in actually removed them from the premises. So One thing I usually like to say about this business, and you probably know this, is don't say you've seen it all because you probably haven't. In the Mitchell case, interesting enough, we terminated the leads due to several lease violations. She was not residing in the apartment for a hundred and twenty days. This was a subsidized apartment. There were housekeeping violations. There were parking role violations. This lady was really a hot mess, and we ended up terminate the lease agreement. We won at the trial court level on the dispossessed reaction, but then she subsequently followed a fair housing complaint and alleged everything from intentional discrimination to low and behold, disparate impact. And one of her allegations was is that our policies pertaining to transferred to one bedroom to parking. I mean, she layered a bunch of stuff together, had a disparate impact upon African America. And one of the things she tried to do is she tried to use statistics, which is what you're, you know, somewhat supposed to do, And her argument was, well, in City of Atlanta, there are fifth fifty percent of the population is African American. But only thirty percent live in this community. Therefore, I believe I've shown a prima fascia case of of disparate impact. Well, the court rejected that argument. On the on the theory that those statistics were not related, there wasn't any causality or causation between the statistics she provided and the alleged discriminatory impact or claims. So it sort of indicates that the statistics alone will not do it. It has to be robust. There's a robust casualty requirement that's necessary that has to be proven in order to prevail on these claims. Now let me Let me say one more thing to kinda illustrate this a little bit better. So in twenty twenty, October twenty four, twenty twenty, HUD kinda slid in a rule on us that that follows the Texas case. And the the rule was previously, which really hadn't been visited a whole lot, was it was a lot easier for plaintiffs to prove disparate impact claims, even though we really didn't have any in in fair housing. The court then the court, the HUD then followed the Texas inclusive case and basically went to the the burdens on plane of, meaning the tenant or resident or person applying for the apartment, to challenge the policy that it was arbitrary or or unnecessary to achieve a valid interest. And then it required additional items on the plaintiff, which they could they have to show that the policy is a direct cause of the discriminatory effect, that the practice has a disproportionate adverse effect on members of the protected class, if the alleged disparity is significant and that there is a direct relation between the injury asserted and the injuries conduct alleged, And then it also allowed the landlord, in this case, to rebut those allegations. So it's a burden shifting analysis, they have to put up good evidence, and we get an opportunity to rebut that the policy or practice is not arbitrary, and we can show and challenge those claims. Very good. Very good. That is really helpful to really drive down drill down into actually how this disparate impact can actually be enforced and supported or debunked. And it sounds like clearly, we need to have robust data analysis to really stand up and present and then on the side of property management, we can counter that with our own robust data analysis. And so there is an opportunity for us to present that fairly in the courtroom, which great. And in this data driven world that we're in, I think that's a relevant piece for us all to really hold on to. That we should be scraping and collecting data that is gonna support those policies that we create. And, of course, you guys know great happy to help you with that. So let's go on. Let's continue. How might it work in the real world Mike? Actually, if you don't mind, I'm going to go ahead and and chat it down. My d. I won't buy with you, Nate. That yeah. We're not sitting close enough to slap each other and say, wait. This is my turn. And, you know, you've made a really good point about you know, being educated and and knowing, and and, of course, Mike is always ready to step in with practical information as well as defense But some of the areas of of disparate impact and this list that we have with Fibrillates is not the entire list. But one of the best things I think for folks is never to get even the door knocked on a on a disparate impact case to begin with. And so there are some areas right now that at least make those of us that that follow this kind of exciting topic. You know, that if we're doing it right, we shouldn't actually even get a disparate impact, and so a disparate impact case. So we need to really look at some of the real world issues that are out there and some of the things, again, that we might be saying, we do this because, and it's for everybody, so it can't be discriminatory. But the reality is there's that oops factor like pizza. I'm having the gentleman with the beard. And so the five of those, one is drug and crime screening policies. White will do a lot on that one. Okay. -isions. You know, what is the rental, the financial, you know, condition that I'll rent to you? Some credit screening, Some of the house rules that people have on at the property, everybody has house rules for the property. And some of the decisions about why we do or don't renew a lease. So with that, I think we need to start looking at some of those real world issues. And Dana, which one are we gonna look at first? Well, I think Mike is going to sit in the hot seat for us and talk about the hot topic, which is the drug crime screening policies. You know, Mike, would you give us more details around background checks and screening? I'd be happy to. I mean, this is probably the most prominent area of vulnerability for our industry for disparate impact claims. I mean, our our criminal criteria policies and the screening is the area that the government, for example, sees as as of importance because it deals with housing and people able to secure housing. So for example, this criminal history chart that I've put up on the screen is not mine. It's from this is these are this statistics that the government used that HUD and the DOJ used when in when doing their analysis and putting their memo together, And if you notice from here, I'm not gonna read every one of these, but it's interesting, you know, some of these statistics are a little older and they probably need to update them. For example, in twenty fourteen, African Americans comprised approximately thirty six percent of the total present population in the US, but only about twelve percent of the country's total population. And the same thing with Hispanic, Hispanic individuals comprising approximately twenty two percent of the present population, but only seventeen percent of the total US population. So what the DOJ did is they drilled down pretty deep on who is going to prison, who gets convicted, who's you know, where are these crimes coming from. And if you look at the bottom on the imprisonment rate across all age groups, african Americans are six times, African American males are six times more likely to be incarcerated, and Hispanic males are two times likely to be incarcerated over non Hispanic white males. So, these are the statistics that they use to substantiate the disparate impact policy set forth by HUD. So basically, this is this is comes straight out of the memo, who gets a record, and I'll talk a little bit more about the memo in a second. And, basically, they they targeted to two groups, and it could be more than that. I I think Nadine's example is a good one. In this case, African Americans know the minorities are just apportionally arrested and convicted, particularly prevalent in non violent drug offenses. And what's the impact of the record, as we know, it it negatively impacts as there are chances for callback for jobs, it impacts their ability to obtain apartments. And, obviously, this this negative effect is worse for African Americans. And Latinos. And again, this comes straight from the memo. There's sort of historical analysis that they that they go through. And this memo was dated back when, Mike? April four twenty sixteen, and I would encourage everyone to pull it up just sit down and read it. It's not a real hard read. I'm gonna kinda give you the nuts and bolts of it. But here we are. In twenty twenty one. And certainly twenty twenty was a year for us to really have a major focus on the racial injustice that has been so systemic in the country, and we're still dealing with this today in twenty twenty one. This is why people are in the streets and why we were so intentional about being tuned in on the chauvin case that just settled. It's statistically robust statistics are here to prove that this is a real issue for us in this country stream. Exactly. And so they they kind of give you the summary of the memo. They they went through the statistics, they talked about this impact on one particular race or national origin. And and basically it outlined the test for discrimination. Number one is, is there a disparate impact? Number two is the policy necessary to achieve a substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory purpose. And is there a less discriminatory alternative, and that's something we should always look to. Same difference in dealing with reasonable accommodations. If we can't provide one, we need to come up with an alternative The same works with disparate impact as well. And this is this is interesting. I love the quote. It comes right out of CFR, and it and it pretty much talks, if you look on the right hand side, I mean, a housing provider must ever be able to proof through reliable evidence that its policy or practice or making housing decisions based on criminal history actually assists in protecting resident safety in our property. And so that's really what moves down to Well Can I interject something there? Because when I go back and see that, it makes me think of an example that I used to bring up because the landlord will say, you know, oh, but we do this because we want to keep everything safe at our property. We want our residents to be safe. And so, you know, we're not taking anybody with a criminal background. And my response to that always was you wouldn't rent to market Stewart. And because she had a criminal background, yet Martha Stewart can take, you know, good care of the property, Martha Stewart can pay the rent. And at the end of her lease, it's going to look prettier than it was when she moved in. And so part of it again is just looking and saying, doesn't actually protect resident safety or the property. And I think that's a real good piece for your quote for the the attendees that are with us today is to understand that they need to look at that policy and say, does it really assist in one insane advice or not? And that's a great example. The other example they used in the memo was For example, a blanket policy on on denying someone based solely on the fact that they had a felony Let's say that you're, you know, someone's twenty years old and they get convicted for something they got involved in, and it's a felony, and are now thirty eight, and they haven't had any any issue at all. They, you know, kept their nose clean, they did their probation, there's been no recidivism in the crime. I love that word, by the way. That's you. And now, we're denying them based on housing because they quote had a felony. They're not a threat, there's no argument that a person like that is a threat to the health safety and welfare of this staff or the other resident, that's really the intent here. Is this person a threat? What's the chance that this person's gonna do it again? And so the memo goes into a lot of detail about that. The other example I use is like someone that's eighteen or nineteen and gets a drug related conviction for possession or even something a little bit greater. And again, they're thirty something years old and we're denying them. I just I just think that that's really the cases that they're targeting on these disparate impact claims, especially those blanket policies that simply say we're not going to to, you know, we're gonna deny you based on the felony, and we're gonna talk about, you know, what what they what they think you should do. And this is how Huddl analyzes it. This is sort of in line with the Texas case. You know, the whole burden shifting thing that I talked about earlier, I'm not gonna reread it. But it just basically, they've got to show the prima fascia case the burden shifts back to us as the housing provider to show that the the practices necessary achieve a substantial, a substantial legitimate, non discriminatory interest, and so forth. Here's I think it's important And a rest alone is not evidence of criminal activity to support an adverse admission termination or eviction decision. Every time we get a phone call about termination of the lease agreement, the first thing I hear is they got arrested. And I was like, Okay. What'd they get arrested for? Well, we're still looking into that. We'll get the police report. Let's look at it. And let's look at the facts relating to the rest before we take any action. So the memo in HUD believes that you can consider the conduct behind the arrest, and you should, especially when you terminate a lease or when you're considering, it you know, you're you know, big large companies have trouble with this because they set standards on their rental criteria for acceptance and denial. Smaller companies can do a better job of it, meaning that it's better practice to look at the individual conduct behind the arrest than just simply saying, well, the arrest is outside our time frame, we're going to approve you. So it's important to know you simply can't deny them because of the rest, but you can certainly look into the activity. Let me give you an example. I had a case where we had terminated the lease based upon an arrest where the individual I mean, he basically -- it was -- it was -- she brought in -- she let an unauthorized occupant move into her apartment, and he ends up beating the child like, you know, and gets arrested for I mean, literally, it was really ugly and bad. And you know, we terminated the lease. Well, we weren't looking at the arrest. We were looking at the conduct behind the arrest when we terminated the lease. And as long as you're doing that consistently and uniformly in your practices, that's going to substantiate your legitimate reason for termination of the lease, for example, or for denial of the application. And we'll talk a little bit more about what else you need to look at. The look back First of all, you should have reasonable look back periods. And what does that mean? Let me let me kinda tell you what that means. That means, in general, you should not look farther back than seven years. Now where does the seven years come from? Yeah. Everybody always asks me now, where does seven years come from? Well, in fair housing, we steal from one industry and one industry only, and that's the employment side. So the seven years comes from the employment background checks, how far back did they look for employment, for criminal history backgrounds on employment side. Makes sense. That's where that comes from. And seven years is is what we've kinda deemed to be a reasonable amount of time to look back for a single offense. You could have a policy that says, if you have more than one conviction, we're gonna look back ten years, as long as you've got multiple offenses. But seven on a single offense is is generally gonna be approved, and they talk about it in the, in the memo about having reasonable look back periods and not just arbitrary. Amount. So, if you got somebody fifteen years ago that had a theft charge, and they haven't had anything since, and they applied to rent the department, that's probably one you want to prove. It's not one that you would reject if you would need to have reasonable look back periods. And misdemeanors are even longer. I mean, a lot of misdemeanors now when I review these policies, we take out a lot of these this demeanor. I mean, they just need to be serious misdemeanors that go back for a considerable amount of time If they're aggravating or serious in nature or multiple misdemeanors within the last ten years, then we may consider, you may consider those. But in general, you gotta be very careful with misdemeanors. Those are the ones that will that will get you in trouble. And you may end up getting a a fair housing complaint. Let's let's face the last thing we want is DOJ. Right. And the target, the crosshairs of the DOJ on a on a disparate impact claim. Absolutely. Mike, Christine is asking, before you go any further, to just kind of clarify your example that you gave earlier about the lease termination where the woman actually had resident that was not listed on the lease, but somehow, I guess, he abused the child. And to speak one that a little bit more about that it was not based on the arrest, but on the action it took place. Correct. I mean, so the, and and we put this in our letters, you know, we terminate the lease based on having an authorized occupant, but we also based it on the arrest, and we go and I go into specifics as to what the actual conduct was behind the termination of the lease, and the reason for doing that is so that it's clear that we're looking at the conduct behind the arrest, not the fact that the unauthorized occupant. Let's say it was the resident, I'll make this even simpler. Okay. The residents arrested. We don't terminate just based on the sole fact that they're arrested, because the lease says you can't do criminal activity on the property. Right? Yes. So on old school days, if there was an arrest, we just go, okay, we're terminating the lease. Under the the the memo and the new standards of disparate impact, you really need to look at the conduct behind the arrest, in each case when you terminate a lease. So the example I gave, we're looking at the fact that this unauthorized occupant, the wedding is supposed to be living there committed this awful crime on the property that led to to an injury to a child, which we have other children on the property and we have a legitimate We can That is that is not the kind of case that a DOJ or any plans attorney is interested in. The kind of case they're interested in is the one I described earlier which is the one where they haven't had a conviction in number of years, and we just simply deny them. Those are the cases that they're they're very interested in. I've read the cases. I see where they're going with this. It's not these, where we're really looking at the conduct. And so I Again, I want to reiterate you have a right to look at the conduct, but you need to do it consistently, and you need to document what that conduct was. Get the police reports before you take any action to terminate the police? Now, I know we have a lot of information that we still want to cover, and we're really getting down you the wire on our time. We wanna be respectful of everyone that has tuned in. Chrisanne did ask If that person who was arrested denied the accusation, would you have to wait for trial to terminate the leave? So, great question. So what we did is we got with the investigator in charge and discussed some of the evidence. And based on the evidence that we obtained through the investigator, he couldn't tell us much, but he could tell us enough to where we had enough facts to help forward with terminating the lease. So we did not have to wait for a conviction. Thank you. Okay. We're going to move on. And here's just some do's and don'ts. We you can it's kinda standard stuff. Don't have a blanket policy. You know, don't have arbitrary criminal background policies, you know, don't provide inconsistent explanations of the dial for housing applications, that kind of thing. So this kind of just gives you do's and don't, stuff we've already really kind of talked about. And one of the good things is that griseel is going to be giving everybody access to this porting. So, at some point in time, if they're, you know, they really want to drill down for their own policy making into some do's and don'ts. They'll be able to access this. Yeah. Good. Absolutely. Thank you, Nadine. So, hey, Nadine, while you have the mic, let's just keep going with you. How does this impact rental decisions? Alright. Well, we're gonna talk for just a moment about the the financial or the business aspect -- Okay. -- and the first one that's there, of course, a source or type of income in quite frankly, and might correct me if I'm wrong. This goes beyond being a potential disparate impact case Because right now, source of income is a very sensitive hidden of itself, topic of their housing. And in the old days, and I've been around in the business, you know, for decades, we've got really hung up on what qualified somebody, you know, kind of work they did or the work they didn't do or if they had, you know, some government assistance, you know, some charitable assistance from a nonprofit. And so follow why is that people come to you and want to rent. And they make enough money from a legal source that can be documented, then they've met your financial criteria in terms of the actual amount of income. Okay. So, beyond even disparate impact. It just It doesn't matter where it comes from if it's legal, and they can show that they're getting it. Don't fall into a source of income case that has nothing to do necessarily be brought under disparate impact. But just And in many places, federal and locally and state wise, source of income as we be becoming a protected class in and of itself anyway. And so for big management companies, that's an issue. Income multipliers You always need to be able to justify why you're saying to someone that they have to make two or three times the rent. Where could I creatively create a discrete impact case out of this is someone with a disability. Their disability keeps them from a high income job. But they get enough other kinds of assistance that may not be direct income or because they don't drive because of their disability. They don't have car payment, gas, car insurance. Okay. Overall, at their financial picture, when you deny them on a credit base, you got of your credit reporting act that you have to say to someone, here's why in your background financially, we can't take you. They have a right to go about that. And people with disabilities could arguably bring cases on disparate impact based on the fact that their income may be lower, but their out go is not as high as other people. So they have enough leeway to make that rental payment. You have certainly brought an broadening our outlook, Nadine. And Mike, thank you. Guys, we have about ten minutes left, so we're gonna wanna move on because we definitely wanna get all of this covered, but to Nate's point, we will have the recording available. So Let's talk about house rules. Alright. And that's going to be me for just a moment as well. And with house rules, what we're talking about, particularly, are those that affect families. And I think back in my fair housing education career and have been, like, lecturing and lecturing and lecturing and beating my head against the wall, When we create policies of behavior and property, I think the most important thing to remember is that you don't care who's doing something bad, you care that the behavior is bad. And people, when in my class, they raise their hand and say, Well, what happens when we have kids that are throwing bricks through the, you know, the the clubhouse windows? And I'm going like, well, you mean it would be okay then at the twenty five year old? Through a break through the window, right? Because they have all these rules that target families and people with children. So, the bottom line is when you have a rule that is behavior based? It's a rule for everyone. It is set for certain people. Like, children shouldn't play on the grass. Well, if you really care that much about your grass, nobody should be playing on the grass. The parking lots are for, you know, for playing. Will then college students throw in a football back and forth. That's not allowed. Because otherwise, people with children are protected class for million styles could bring that kind of case as well? I could be applied to race. Sometimes I see that for house rules, spills over into other protected classes. Yes, you know, certain -- as you're right, Mike, certain ethnic groups like to gather more very social within their extended family. So then you have that, no loitering, no gathering, no this or that. So just always I'm gonna look toward the end here in a matter of moments. We're sort of gonna tell you how to walk through your policies with the analysis anyway. Yes. Let's jump to that in terms of time. And I wanted to circle back for Brandy and let you know, Brandy, we are going to collect some questions and get those answers back to you in a document following our webinar because you asked a great question about unemployment, but we're gonna keep going since we have only about seven slap. So Mike, I think maybe you've kind of pretty well covered this to some extent? I did. I just wanna add a couple more things. I mean, it's it's important to know when you deal with these termination issues where did the violation occur? Was it on or near the property, or was it on the other end of town? And, again, knowing your demographic so the property is helpful too in evaluating any of these cases. But we've already spoken about this. These are just sort of the general factors to consider. Yes. And I think also something that Dana was talking about is where we are socially today. In twenty ten to twenty twenty one. And there are people who are going to come with the rest and perhaps even criminal records for some of the protesting -- Correct. -- is that if somebody has a criminal record because they were protesting, you know, three miles away and a, you know, at an event, should we as an apartment community not rent to them, you know, a year from now, because of that. So I think we might stop seeing a little bit of this coming into the dynamic of disparate impact as these arrest records start getting posted the, you know, all the different protests and events that we have packed tied to some of the things that have been going on. Great. Absolutely agree. And so I know that, Mike, you have some tips for us, some operational tips so that we know how to apply some of this information. Chantel says this is great information. And Grace Hill, we should do more of this. And Shantel, that is our intention to do so. I'm a turn it over to Mike to review some operational tips And Chantel and Brandy, your questions will be listed so that Mike and Nadine can reply because You do have some great questions that I'm sure the rest of the audience would like to know answers to. And Dana, this is when I would elbow my because the operational tips are mine. Oh, good. Okay. Then you take it away, Nadine. Okay. Here's what I want folks to do. The first tip is take a look at what you have now. Whether it's brand new, you've been a management or you, yourself, as management have come up with a new policy. Take a look at it, and I'm talking now about the housing decisions of human beings, not your cable provider. But take a look at those and review them as re relates to rental requirements and community rules. And we've talked about that. So, now I want you to look at what you've got now based on what we've talked about and see if they make as much sense. And then that takes us to the second operational tool. For those practices that you have now, literally, have a form in house that says, why do we have this? What are we trying to accomplish? Could a certain group, like my examples of people who children. Could they be more negatively impacted than another group? And if it appears that that may be the case, explore and consider alternatives to encompass the same purpose. So, it may be just a different way of saying something, it may be changing policy. Operational tip number three. If you are creating new policies and practices, it's the same form. This? Why do we think we need to have that? What are we trying to accomplish? Will certain groups be negatively impacted? And if you think that certain groups might be more negatively impacted, explore other alternatives to accomplish your purpose. And then the last of the operational tips, whatever the decisions may be, document the policy choices. As to why we believe that we need to do this, and there is no other way to accomplish this purpose. And Mike, correct me if I'm wrong, and then we can, you know, be be finishing up here. One of the defenses to a disparate impact case is that even if there is a disparate impact, if there's no other way to accomplish a legitimate purpose, then sometimes that disparate impact charge or claim will not stand. Is that correct? That's correct. Those cases can actually be one on summary judgment. Okay. So, if there's no other way to do it, then the policy you have, even if it is inadvertently affecting some others without an intent. It still may be okay. Thanks for raising that question. And Absolutely. Thank you both. Chantel said it best. This was so much incredible information in a a timely manner because of all of what we are seeing in the country today. One of my favorite because he hails from my hometown, Baltimore, Maryland. Justice Thirdwood Marshall says the legal system can force open doors. And sometimes even knock down walls, but it cannot build bridges. That job belongs to you and me. And guys, Grace Hill, wants to partner with you in that effort as Nadine and Mike talked about your policies. Understand that we have a solution within Grace Hill called Policy Partner. And we have a team with over twenty some years of industry experience and knowledge that is happy to team up with you if you need assistance in that area. And for those grace Hill, partners. And those that are not partners yet, but potentials that are listening in Keep in mind that for fair housing month, this month of April, that we have new fair housing courses and fair housing booster courses for those veterans that have been around for a long time that is available in your course workload. So check it out. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mike, and Nadine. I appreciate the friendship. And I appreciate the support of you guys partnering with Great Hill to discuss this very important topic today. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. We appreciate it, and y'all have a great afternoon.