Are "roommates" a protected class?

[Sam Leon]

I have a question regarding the Fair Housing Act's Familial Status.

The intent is to prevent anyone from refusing to rent to or give preferences to people based on their family status...single vs married, with or without children etc...

Familial status covers:

• families with children under the age of 18,
• pregnant persons, and
• any person in the process of securing legal custody of a minor child (including adoptive or foster parents).
• persons with written permission of the parent or legal guardian

Where do roommates factor into all these?

Example, you are renting a two or three bedroom property.  Tenants can be married with or without children, unmarried couples, or friends, I don't have any preferences, nor should I.

However, I am seeing more and more people who want to rent together but they do not know each other.  In other words, they met through social media, may be Jill wants to rent a 3 bedroom house and posted that on Facebook, and Laura and Julian responded.  So Jill contacted me and says she and two friends want to rent my house and set up a viewing.  At the viewing they call came in different cars, I can tell they do not know each other because they greeted each other with "you must be Laura" and "hi I am Julian".  So basically you are renting to three strangers who have never met each other.

This creates a few problems.  I went through this twice...because they do not know each other, they do not trust each other, so the first thing they want are interior doors with dead bolts.  Next is instead of one point of contact for "rent" and maintenance, they soon all want to be individually notified for everything, or they no longer want to be collectively responsible for damages and fees, even though my leases specifically stated I don't care who breaks a window, everyone on the lease is responsible.  Of course then one person wants to leave before the lease ends but the other two want to stay, which again, not my problem because the three collectively signed a lease.

Bottom line is renting to roommates who are complete strangers to each other, is exactly like student rentals.

Is it legal to avoid such arrangements? Is it a violation of FHA? I am not even sure I can easily tell if they make an effort to hide this from me.

I guess I am just ranting.