New York Times

Times

New York Times

The strict interpretation of fair-housing laws prohibits brokers from providing information about people that could be construed as discriminatory in any of 14 protected categories. The categories include familiar ones like race, religion, sex and disabilities and less well-known ones like familial status, marital status, citizenship and occupation.

So a broker who says something like, “There are tons of little kids in this building — it’s really family friendly” could be accused of specifically steering families to the building and driving people without children away from it.