I'm not sure if any of this is exactly new. That's what HUD does. And there's a LONG list of Thou Shall Not's when it comes to selling or renting property. Basically, showing any preference for anything is essentially illegal.
The only exceptions are elderly only properties, and women being able to advertise women only roommate preferences. Sorta. It was and sorta still is illegal for women to say they only wanted female roommates. But 9th Circuit Court more or less said "This is friggin insane. I don't care what the law says. Overturned." Fair Housing Council v. roommate.com Those are the only exception. If you're say, a High Priest of Satan and don't want a fundamentalist Buddhist for a roommate, don't advertise it unless you have too much money so you want to shed some of it via a lawsuit.
You cannot legally advertise virtually any preferences with a roommate or rental property. Even employment requirements are tricky, and you should have a lawyer review.
Friend of mine is a property manager. She mentioned a bunch of the units are rented to sales reps for ADP. They tend to be young, drinkers and loud at late hours. "So why not move all the party crowd to one area away from say, family folks with kids? Seems obvious." Because it'd be illegal discrimination. Correct, you can't discriminate on the basis of being very loud and indulging in excessive public drinking. Both the family types AND young party types (who aren't bad people, they tried keeping it down during the week days) would have been happier, and said so repeatedly in complaints. Doesn't matter. It's illegal.
Now, I do think that ethnic discrimination is bad. However, like always, govt regs may have started at an arguably reasonable infringement... And then went bat excrement nuts.
