Registered sex offenders have criminal histories. My property managers automatically reject an applicant who is a registered sex offender. Accepting such an applicant opens you up to liability claims from other tenants and neighbors.
Again.... California Fair Housing.... page 21
http://www.hrfh.org/forms/2014_Fair_Housing%20_Handbook.pdf
Although registered sex offenders are not a protected class under the fair housing laws, California Civil Code §
290.46 (l)(2)(G) does make it illegal to use a person’s status as a registered sex offender for purposes related to
housing or accommodations. This includes denying a person housing because of their status as a registered sex
offender.
Again... that booklet you keep citing is not a reliable source of information. For one thing, there is no such thing as California Civil Code § 290.46 (google it, you'll see). There is a California
Penal Code § 290.46, and it's about online sex-offender registries--in other words, it's NOT about the simple fact that someone was convicted of a sex crime that shows up on a criminal background check; it's about online registries that the public can access. And here's the other part that booklet leaves out:
"(L) (1) A person is authorized to use
information disclosed pursuant to this section only
to protect a person at risk.
(2)
Except as authorized under paragraph (1) or any other provision of law, use of any information that is disclosed pursuant to this section for purposes relating to any of the following is prohibited:
(A) Health insurance.
(B) Insurance.
(C) Loans.
(D) Credit.
(E) Employment.
(F) Education, scholarships, or fellowships.
(G) Housing or accommodations.
(H) Benefits, privileges, or services provided by any business
establishment"
Again, I'm not in California and although a lawyer am not one in California, but my first take on that is that:
- Unless some exception applies, I cannot use information disclosed
in California's online sex-offender registry to make decisions about housing. But that has nothing to do with whether I can refuse to rent to a prospective tenant based on a criminal background check showing that they were convicted of a sex crime.
Remember: prospective tenants have to consent to your running a criminal check, and the check will say specifically what they were convicted of; they do NOT have to consent to your looking at some website of sex offenders, and those websites generally do not say why the person is considered a sex offender. It could literally just be that he had consensual sex with his 16yo girlfriend when he was 18...or it could be because he's a pedophile; you have no way of knowing. Long story short, it's a very different animal from a criminal background check. My guess is that the reason that you can't use the registries to deny someone housing (unless one of the exceptions applies, in which case you can) is because they're trying to ensure that (1) tenants won't get driven from their homes in the middle of their lease terms by landlords who happened to notice that they're on the registry and (2) landlords won't reject such tenants without doing a more thorough safety evaluation (e.g., criminal background check and consideration of whether there are "people at risk" that the landlord may be responsible for, such as other tenants in the same unit.
- I CAN use info from the state's sex-offender registry to reject a prospective tenant IF an exception applies, and there's a big fat exception right there in the law: "to protect a person at risk." If I have any female tenants, especially more vulnerable-seeming ones, and I'm renting a unit in that same building, I would think I have a legitimate argument that I would reject a sex offender as a tenant in order "to protect [those female tenants]" who I think would be at risk. And there may well be any number of other exceptions written into other parts of CA law.
Long story short, that pamphlet you keep linking to was written by a nonprofit with an agenda. It was not written by a law firm or government agency. If I were a landlord in California, I would call up my lawyer and run these questions by her to make sure I'm on solid ground; since I'm not in CA I'm not going to take the time to look at this in depth, but that pamphlet is clearly not super-reliable as a source of legal advice.