How to not discriminate against married/non-married couples?

[Taylor McClung]

Hi there!

I have two multi-family rental properties and have come across this situation a couple times and have never found a solid answer to. Can anyone provide their insight?

Situation: I own rental property in California, which says you can not discriminate when renting a property to people who are married and those who are not. Where the problem lies is in qualifying their income. Our personal standards are that all occupants must individually have at least 3x rent in gross monthly income. If my wife and I were renters, this would disqualify us! (I'm the sole income provider). What we have unintentionally done is disqualified potentially great married couples, like us, from renting. 

On the positive side, it has limited us from accepting the "non-serious relationship" type renters because most of those people we run into, one of them usually doesn't make near enough to qualify with our standards. 

Your help with any examples would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Taylor