Adults Only

No children need apply

NO KIDS read the sign on the front door of the apartment building in San Francisco's Sunset district. Photographed last summer by investigators for the city's consumer-fraud unit, the sign has just cost the landlords a $4,000 fine. The penalty, agreed to by court-approved settlement, was the first under a three-year-old San Francisco law prohibiting apartment owners from refusing to rent to families with children.

The law is a response to a growing U.S. phenomenon that American families find more and more intolerable. As the single-family house becomes a more prohibitively expensive American dream, more young families are forced to live in apartments. In cities with a low vacancy rate like San Francisco (2%) and Los Angeles (3%), landlords can pick and choose among tenants. Increasingly, the choice is "adults only." Such restrictions suit older couples who have raised their children, like quiet and do not want to trip over roller skates on the landing, as well as many singles who feel the mere presence of children will cramp their swinging lifestyle. The policy also makes economic sense to landlords for whom tenants' children can create maintenance problems. But what are young parents to do? Says Dora Ashford, director of the Los Angeles Fair Housing for Children Coalition: "People with children are a desperate class of renter right now."

At least six states--New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Illinois, Michigan and Massachusetts--have found it necessary to ban housing discrimination against families with children. In most states, though, a landlord can legally evict a tenant for the "crime" of childbearing. At least that is what happened in California to Stephen and Lois Wolfson after they had a child last year. Forced to leave their $425-a-month apartment in Los Angeles' Marina del Rey, they fought the eviction in municipal court and lost. Now they live in a condominium at roughly twice the cost of their old apartment, and are appealing the case under California civil rights law. If they win, a lot of ADULTS ONLY signs will come down, at least in California: an estimated 60% of Los Angeles apartments do not rent to children, a figure that climbs to 75% for apartments under $450 a month and up to 80% in the city's much sought-after West Side. Elsewhere in the country, percentages vary enormously. In overbuilt Atlanta, less than 30% of the apartments are for adults. But in New Orleans, with its 90% occupancy rate, at three out of four apartments no children need apply.

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