Ruling on Anti-Child Housing Was Overdue

The recent ruling by the state Fair Employment and Housing Commission against the occupancy limits that discriminate against families with children was long overdue.

A representative for the landlords’ Orange County Apartment Assn. said the ruling “won’t have much effect” on his group’s 3,000 members because the association recommends broader guidelines for fair housing than the case involved in the commission’s ruling. Perhaps.

But recommending guidelines and having them followed are sometimes two very different things. The estimated 700 formal complaints filed each year in Orange County by families alleging child discrimination, and the countless others who don’t bother to file complaints, suggest that a disturbingly large number of landlords are not following the guidelines.

Since a 1982 California Supreme Court ruling, it has been illegal for landlords to discriminate against families with children. But many landlords in Orange County and elsewhere have been sidestepping that ruling by setting up arbitrary occupancy limits to reject people with children.

One example of how that works was related in The Times on Tuesday by Glen Morris, an ex-GI just home from duty in West Germany. Morris was searching for an apartment last month in Santa Ana for himself, his wife and infant son. He found an advertised rental. But when he told the landlord about his 10-month-old son, she refused to rent to him, claiming that she couldn’t allow more than two people to a unit because “of the parking situation.” And Morris didn’t even have a car.

He reported the incident to the Orange County Housing Council, which investigates such complaints.

The ruling by the state Fair Employment and Housing Commission in San Francisco should help put a stop to the kind of subterfuge and rejection that Morris and so many other parents face in their search for housing.

In a unanimous vote that one state housing attorney called a “landmark” ruling, the commission fined the former owners of a Hawaiian Gardens apartment complex $5,000 for discrimination. The owners had refused to rent a two-bedroom apartment to a married couple with an infant daughter because their occupancy limits allowed only one occupant per bedroom in a two-bedroom apartment. The commission said that the formula, no matter what its intent, discriminated against children.

The ruling could still be challenged in court. But it does put landlords on notice that state and local housing officials are serious about enforcing the state ban against adult-only rentals. And they should enforce that law vigorously.

Many young families have trouble enough finding and affording housing without illegally being turned away or forced to split up and send their children to live with relatives, as some families have done to rent an apartment.

Health and safety dictate some legal limits against overcrowding. But such limits must be realistically applied--especially when all occupants are members of an immediate family--and not be used to lock out children.