As an owner, why can’t I put a limit on how many people live on my property?
The State of California uses the “two plus one” rule, meaning that for each bedroom you can have two adults plus an additional person; for example, for a two-bedroom property, five people would be considered acceptable under the rule, but over five people could be considered overcrowding. If you challenge this rule, you could be making yourself vulnerable to a Fair Housing Complaint for discrimination based on familial status. A common example is an owner requiring/advertising that only one person can live in a studio; technically, under the rule, three people would be permitted.
When we’ve spoken with lawyers around these owner questions in the past, they’ve suggested that challenging these types of aspects of an application would likely result in a “test case.” In other words, there is no likely outcome and the case would be testing the regulations (this can be a very costly process against the State of California as the opponent). If applicants for a property are qualified with income, credit, reserves and landlord reference, we can’t legally deny them for the amount of occupants so long as it is within the “two plus one” rule.