LGBT community moves closer to federal fair-housing protection
A ruling by a U.S. district court judge may fuel efforts to expand the housing rights of those with “unconventional” lifestyles.
Q. Is it true that Congress has finally added fair-housing protection for LGBT people?
A. Congress hasn’t passed any formal legislation to specifically extend federal fair-housing protections to lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual individuals or couples.
However, a ruling issued earlier this month by a powerful U.S. district court judge in Denver could pressure lawmakers into expanding those safeguards to LGBT people sooner, rather than later.
The complicated lawsuit was filed by Rachel Smith, a transgender woman, and Tonya Smith. The legally married parents of two young children, their lawsuit claimed that they were denied a handsome but affordable rental townhouse in the suburb of Boulder, Colorado, by a landlord who cited the pair’s “unique relationship.”
In an email rejecting their rental application, the landlord, Deepika Avanti, also said “they were not welcome to rent the townhouse” because a family who lived next door was worried that the Smiths’ young kids would create too much noise in their quiet community.
Currently, the federal Fair Housing Act prohibits a landlord from discriminating against a potential tenant based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin.
A handful of cities have specifically extended such protection to LGBT individuals and couples, but federal law has not. The April 5 ruling by U.S. Federal Court Judge Raymond P. Moore could add some major fuel to efforts by several groups to change that.
The key question in the case was whether the provision of the Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination against a person’s “sex” is meant to include sexual orientation or gender identity. Judge Moore ruled that it does.
In his decision, Moore agreed with the Smiths’ contention that “discrimination against women ( like them) for failure to conform to stereotype norms concerning to or with whom a woman should be attracted, should marry and/or should have children with is discrimination on the basis of sex” — thereby a violation of the Fair Housing Act.
Some congressional representatives are already using the court ruling to bolster their efforts to approve pro-LGBT housing laws and related measures. But they are still facing an uphill battle with fellow lawmakers who oppose such an expansion of federal law, previous lowercourt decisions that favored landlords, and a president who hasn’t taken a firm stance on either side of the issue.
REAL ESTATE TRIVIA
A survey by the National Association of Gay and Lesbian Real Estate Professionals ( www.naglrep.com) states that 54 percent of the LGBT community owns a home or at least one other type of real estate.
Q. We have had our mortgage with the same lender for several years. The bank has always sent us a payment notice around the start of each month, and we have always made the payment by the due date.
However, we didn’t receive a notice last month, and subsequently made the payment a few days late. Now the bank wants to charge us a $60 late-payment penalty.
Is this legal, considering that we did not receive our typical monthly statement?
A. Sorry, but the lender has every right to charge you a penalty because it did not get your payment in a timely manner.
Every mortgage contract includes a provision that allows the bank to charge a late fee if the borrower fails to make a payment by its due date. There’s no legal obligation to provide a monthly reminder, though many lenders do so as a courtesy to their borrowers.
Your letter states that you have always made your monthly payment by its due date, so you should call your bank’s customer-service department immediately to ask that the penalty be waived and removed from your record. Many lenders will do so for longtime customers with sterling payment histories.
The bank also may offer a program that will automatically debit your checking or savings account for each monthly payment so you’ll never be late again. It’s an option worth considering if you have a steady paycheck or collect a retirement check at regular, predictable intervals.
Q. Thank you for your recent column that explained how forming a living trust can help older homeowners — like us — to allow our heirs to inherit our house and other assets without going through probate court. But is a “living trust” the same thing as an “inter vivos” trust?
A. Yes, it is. A living trust is sometimes called an “inter vivos trust,” derived from the ancient Latin term that means “among the living.”
By forming an inexpensive trust while you are alive, you will help to ensure that after you die, your home and other assets are transferred to your heirs without them having to go through costly and timeconsuming probate proceedings.
Q. The garbage disposal in our kitchen stopped working a few days ago. It was installed about 16 months ago, but it came with only a one-year warranty.
The manufacturer says that we will have to either pay full price for a new one
The key question in the case was whether the provision of the Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination against a person’s ‘sex’ is meant to include sexual orientation or gender identity.”
or call a plumber to (hopefully) repair the one we have now.
Either way, we’d be out $100 or maybe even more than $200. What should we do?
A. With some luck, you can easily fix the problem yourself.
If the disposal doesn’t make any noise when you try to turn it on, it may not be getting any power. Try to restore the flow of electricity by pressing its reset button, which you’ll probably
find on the underside of the appliance.
If that doesn’t work, simply go the electrical panel box of your home and reset the circuit breaker that regulates the flow of power to your kitchen.
Should that fail to get your garbage gurgling, disconnect the disposal from its electrical outlet and then test the outlet itself by plugging in a hair dryer or small lamp. If the dryer or lamp doesn’t work, replacing the faulty outlet with a new one is a relatively easy and inexpensive task that you probably can perform on your own.
Conversely, if the disposal hums when you turn it on but makes weird noises or doesn’t grind, it’s probably jammed. Unplug the unit from its electrical outlet, and insert a hex wrench — one was probably included in the box when you first purchased the appliance — and wriggle it in the hexagonal hole on the bottom of the unit.
Some new disposals cost as little as $50 or $60, but better-quality ones start at about $150, according to the pricetracking website CostOwl.com.