Senior Housing

NEW DEFINITION FOR
SENIOR HOUSING REQUIREMENTS
SB 2011

By Denise D. Iger, Esq. of Feldsott, Lee & Feinberg

The Unruh Civil Rights Act prohibits homeowners associations from discriminating against people because of sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, or disability. Excepted from this act is discrimination based upon age, so as to allow retirement communities to be established and maintained.

The definition for a senior housing development has been changed in a manner which makes the law easier to understand. Whereas previously a community must have been thirty five units or fit within a formula which takes into account the local population, the new criteria is simply to just have thirty-five units. However, for Riverside county, the criteria will remain twenty units.