You Can’t Live Here If You Are Voting For Donald Trump
A landlord in Grand Junction is not breaking the law by refusing to lease an apartment to anyone who supports Donald Trump for president.
According to The Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, Mark Holmes is renting out a two-bedroom apartment on Main Street, but he refuses to rent to anyone who supports Trump.
The ad prompted people who don’t agree with his tactic to leave hate messages on Holmes’ voicemail.
“I don’t know what to do anymore about what’s going on in this country,” he told The Daily Sentinel. “It’s just a mess.”
Some thought Holmes was violating federal housing rules by discriminating against political affiliations, but that’s not the case, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“That has nothing to do with the Fair Housing Act,” HUD spokesman Jerry Brown told The Daily Sentinel. “But that seems to be a first, and it’s original.”
“No, Mr. HUD, I’m not refusing this guy from renting my apartment because he’s transgender, it’s because he supports Bernie Sanders.”
“No, Mr.HUD, I’m not refusing this family their housing because they’re black. I’m refusing them because they are Obama supporters.”
Actually, this Fair House Act rule only has a loophole if you are a leftist trying to discriminate. I guarantee the instant a right of center person tries to refuse housing to a minority or LGBT family for supporting anybody on the left, the HUD and the FEDS will have them in court in a nano-second.
Muslim bakers refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding, we all saw the videos. The left and Govt say nothing. A Christian bakery in Oregon does it, all hell brakes loose. Same principle would apply here.
RW,
“Principles”? There are “principles” involved here? SHOCKER!
Well, I hope Mr Holmes (hopefully no relation to the Canadian “Holmes On Homes”) likes his tenants loud, noisy, rude, entitlement minded, late/no rent payment, and destructive.
Karma’s a bitch that way.
Oh, and may Mr Holme’s property value go down by 50%, and the neighbors bring him to court for same.
(casts Evil Eye on Mr Holmes of Grand Junction CO)
So, if a company is facing a RIF, it’s all good for them to lay-off all the Bernie / Hillary supporters first, right?
The property owner’s stance is legal, but risky. One cannot discriminate against a member of a protected class based, in whole or in part, on whatever it is that makes that person a member of the protected class. People who have certain political beliefs are not in a protected class, so the owner can theoretically discriminate based upon political party affiliation or political beliefs.
But like many other things government agencies get involved with, seemingly innocent actions can be determined to be illegal. For example, I may decide not to rent my apartment to Democrats. Being a registered Democrat may not put one in a protected class, but a housing agency may argue that most people who identify as LGBT are registered Democrats, so my ban on renting to registered Democrats is really a ban on renting to LGBT people. Legally, this is called disparate impact, and uses statistics to show that discrimination based upon what seems to be acceptable factors is really disguised discrimination. This is the legal theory used to challenge physical standards for police and fire departments.
As a practical matter, HUD probably considers Trump supporters to be white and evil, so feel free to discriminate because if you are white, male and not old, you have no protections as a practical matter. But if you substitute “Obama,” or even “Hillary Clinton” for “Trump,” HUD would then probably use disparate impact analysis to find discrimination based on race or gender.
If he’da discriminated on the basis of someone supporting HRC, BS, or Hussein then MoveOn, #BLM, and the Soros people would have burned his house down … with him IN it.
The only time liberals care about the law is when they can hit conservatives over the head with it.
Prairie Dog Junction- there is no there there. ( but there were a lot of artsy fartsies about when i was there.)
His name, general location of his domicile and what he did is now public knowledge all show that this guy is stupid! If I had a prospective tenant that was a bleeding-heart liberal and wanted to rent my place, I would show him/her/it around and when they were not looking, let out a rat. Then when they see the rat, scream out loud and exclaim that you did not know how that rodent got there. That’s how we do it in beantown. None of this dodgey social justice code.