Eye and Hair Color on Lease App-- Why??? (apartment, leasing)

[renorich1950]

I am in the process of filling out a form called a Residential Lease Application. The form is from the Texas Association of Realtors.

I was a little surprised to find that the application asks for height, weight, hair color, and eye color. I can't imagine what relevance these characteristics have in processing a lease application. My first reaction is that these are subtle ways of guessing someone's race.

Are we looking at possible profiling here or is there some valid reason for these questions that I'm missing?

Thanks for any input.

[EasilyAmused]

Oh I don't know...maybe it's because when the manager sees a blonde hair, blue eyed 350 lb male using the apartment he rented out to a brown haired, brown eyed 100 lb woman ( that he hasn't seen since the lease signing) he might be able to figure out something weird is going on...sub leasing protection????

TX DL has that too, which leasing offices often match up to the application.... Maybe the DMV is racist too...

[RVD26]

They always ask those questions, mainly for the reasons the poster above already mentioned.
Nothing racist about it.
If they really wanted to be racist, they could just look at your DL and/or look at your name.

[renorich1950]

OK, I can see where I was short-sighted on this one. You guys are right on the money. I figured there was probably a legit reason... that's why I implied I might be missing something. I certainly was missing something and I appreciate the information provided.

Thanks.

[oceangaia]

Originally Posted by renorich1950

OK, I can see where I was short-sighted on this one. You guys are right on the money. I figured there was probably a legit reason... that's why I implied I might be missing something. I certainly was missing something and I appreciate the information provided.

Thanks.

No, you weren't missing anything. That information has no business being on a leasing APPLICATION. It could be collected at time of signing the lease once the application has been approved and would satisfy EVERY legitimate use of the information.

[LostInHouston]

That info gets combined with the census info and is then used by the feds to take your guns, neuter your dog and make you go on government run health care.

[HoustonRonnie]

Odd that. Even you driver's license doesn't state hair color (has a picture though).

Ronnie

[wstaffor]

Originally Posted by renorich1950

Are we looking at possible profiling here

The way you said this has been cracking me up for the last 10 minutes, ahhahaha

[renorich1950]

Originally Posted by DiverTodd62

No, you weren't missing anything. That information has no business being on a leasing APPLICATION. It could be collected at time of signing the lease once the application has been approved and would satisfy EVERY legitimate use of the information.

I checked into this and as far as I can tell it is a violation of the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 to ask any of this on an APPLICATION. I withdraw my apology!

[elnina]

http://www.dfwlandlord.com/pdf/TAR_A...for_Rental.pdf 2007
http://www.texasrealtors.com/mr/forms/blank/2001%20Final.pdf (broken link) 2010

Checked on that form, and the new 2010 form does not have such silly questions.
http://www.taa.org/images/assets/PDF...ase_forweb.pdf most commonly used