Apparently I have some really good timing with my posts since just today the 9th circuit apparently handed down an interesting decision about the fair housing act. Here is a link to the post about it on the Volokh Conspiracy that gives a good description of the decision. Also Eugene Volokh has an interesting legal argument that these restrictions are unconstitutional (I’m not endorsing all the policy views there of course). While there may be no direct logical connection I tend to find it suspicious that many people accept abortion as a constitutional right to abortion but would reject a right to be free of government interference in these sorts of cases.

Also for those of you who wanted a very rough idea of what the Federal Fair Housing act Prohibits here are two very basic explanations.

Finally I just wanted to end with a little rant about how absuredly totally ridiculous the portion of the Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination against people with children is. Not only can you not prevent people with children from living in a building/dwelling (except for old people homes) you can’t even place them in a certain area to leave those without children a little relief nor can you deny them access to the recreational facilities in your building. Additionally it’s pretty damn annoying and stupid that one isn’t allowed to create apartment buildings for singles or do most other things to create a good dating environment.

Absolutely NONE of the traditional justifications for anti-discrimination laws even apply to the children case. People with children are hardly an aggrieved or disadvantaged class and there is no history of discrimination. If anything it is the childless who are frequently required to support other people’s reproductive hobby who are the disadvantaged class. Unlike race, sexual orientation and the like the reason people deny families with children housing is not ignorance, prejudice or bias (everyone was a kid once) but is based in real behavior differences between children and adults. In fact the reason this law exists at all in a society where the vast majority of people like children is because of the real harms they create to neighboring apartments and costs they incur to the owner.

In short the provision about people with children isn’t an anti-discrimination provision at all but a demand that people discriminate in favor of children just because it sucks for some parents when they find it hard to find an apartment to live in with their children. But it also sucks for patents when they have to buy expensive clothes for their children, take them to the doctor, pay for extra airline seats when they go on vacation and so forth. Why not pass a law that says airlines have to price by the family so that a single person, a married couple, and a family with a gaggle of children all fly for the same rate? Or any number of other ways we could force single people to bear the extra costs that children incur?

But fine if we really must help parents find housing with their children then let’s just fucking give them money equal to the average extra rent it costs to rent a similar dwelling for a family and a single individual. As with all rationing system or other non-market solutions simply forcing people not to exercise their preferences (not letting us get together and have a no-child apartment building) is inefficient (not even praedo optimal). No matter what this sort of rule doesn’t belong in a law billing itself as being anti-discrimination.