Can I decline potential tenant based on number of kids or felony

[Ashley Chris]

I am the owner of the house, listed my house for rental. I am dealing with 3 different applicants with following situations

a) one has 7 kids of her own

b) other has 3 kids of her own and 5 kids from foster care (she get a check from welfare for foster)

c) last applicant has felony (of 6 year old)

My questions:-

1) Is it legally OK to decline 'a' and 'b' based on number of kids?

2) Can I charge $100 extra for 'a' and 'b' because they have so many kids

3) Is it legally OK to decline 'c' based on his previous felony (even without trying to understand/asking about the incident)?

(By tone of my question: how can I decline all these applicants and yet be legally right)

I am the owner and property is located in state of Arizona. It is a 5 bed room house

[Patti Robertson]

You cannot discriminate based on familial status.  Your rental criteria must be clearly defined and consistently applied to every screening.  If you use a criterial of 1 person per bedroom, or 2 people per bedroom, etc, you can reject if someone is above that number of people IF you have defined your criteria and you are treating all applicants the same.  I publish my criteria right in all of my rental ads. Every ad includes the maximum number of occupants right in the ad, it is always two times the number of bedrooms, and we never make an exception. You can make your criteria whatever you wish.

Regarding the felony, HUD made felony status a protected class in April of 2016. Landlords can no longer say you will not rent to anyone with a felony conviction in the last X years. That does not mean you cannot use criminal history as a screening criteria, but you must have a reasonible reason to deny an applicant based on their charges.

Here's the summary of the law from the HUD website.