Houfy & Fair Housing Guidelines
What hosts and guests may not do on Houfy — the protected characteristics, listings and house rules, service and support animals, and how to report discrimination.
Last updated September 12, 2026
Everyone should be able to book a place to stay without being turned away for who they are. This page explains what that means on Houfy, what we expect of hosts and guests, and what to do if it goes wrong.
It sits alongside our Community Standards and forms part of our Terms of Service.
Houfy's rule
You may not refuse a booking, cancel one, charge a different price, impose different rules, or treat any guest or host differently because of:
race, color, or national origin
religion
sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity
disability
familial status, including travelling with children or being pregnant
marital status, age, citizenship or immigration status, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected where you or the property are
This is Houfy's rule, and it applies whether or not a legal exemption is available to you. Parts of US housing and public accommodation law do not reach every short-term rental, and several of them carry exemptions for small owner-occupied properties. Our standard does not follow those lines. If you host on Houfy, you host on these terms.
Where local law protects more than this list, the longer list applies.
Which laws apply to a short stay
This is worth understanding, because the answer is not the one most hosts assume.
The US Fair Housing Act applies to a dwelling — somewhere occupied or intended to be occupied as a residence. Longer stays, monthly rentals and rooms in a home someone lives in can fall inside it. A three-night holiday booking by someone who has a home elsewhere generally does not.
For short stays the laws that usually apply instead are Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which covers inns, hotels, motels and other establishments providing lodging to transient guests; 42 U.S.C. §1981, which covers the right to make and enforce contracts regardless of race; and your state, county or city public accommodation and human rights laws, which are often broader than either and are usually the fastest route.
Two things follow. First, the federal lodging rule is narrower than the housing rule — Title II covers race, color, religion and national origin, and it exempts an establishment of five rooms or fewer in a building the proprietor actually lives in. Second, and more important on Houfy: none of that changes the rule above. Houfy's rule is a term of your agreement with us. It applies to every listing and every booking, whatever a statute would or would not reach.
If you are unsure which regime covers a particular property, ask a lawyer where the property is. We cannot tell you, and this page is not legal advice.
What this looks like in practice
Your listing. Describe the property, not the guest you are hoping for. Do not state or imply a preference or a limitation — “professionals only”, “no children”, “suits a couple”, or “not suitable for wheelchair users” used to discourage a booking rather than to describe a genuine feature.
Describing the property accurately is different, and necessary. “Three flights of stairs, no lift” is a fact a guest needs. “No disabled guests” is a refusal. We remove listing text that expresses a prohibited preference.
Your house rules. Rules must apply to everyone equally. A rule that only bites on one group — a quiet policy enforced only against families with children, for instance — is discrimination in practice however it is written.
Your prices. A different nightly rate, cleaning fee, deposit or minimum stay for one group and not another is covered by the rule above. So is withholding a discount or a promotion.
Your responses. Do not screen guests by name, photo, or profile for any of the characteristics above. If you decline a booking, be able to point to the reason — dates, occupancy, your own availability.
Your messages and reviews. The rule applies to what you write to and about a guest, not only to whether you accept them. A review that comments on a guest's race, religion, disability, or family will be removed, and it counts as a violation on its own.
Reasons you can decline. You are not required to accept every booking. You may decline because the dates do not work, the group exceeds your occupancy limit, the guest has a documented history of problems, or the property genuinely cannot accommodate the request. What you may not do is use one of those as cover for something else.
Accessibility, service animals and support animals
If a guest asks for a reasonable adjustment so they can use the property — moving a piece of furniture, a ground-floor room where you have one, arriving at a different time — consider it seriously and say yes where you can.
A no-pets policy does not apply to a service animal. A service animal is an animal individually trained to do work or perform tasks for a person with a disability. On Houfy you must accept one, you may not charge a pet fee or a pet deposit for one, and you may not ask what the person's disability is. You may ask two things: whether the animal is required because of a disability, and what work or task it has been trained to perform.
Support animals are treated differently, and the rules are changing. An emotional support animal provides comfort but has not been trained to perform a task. On 22 May 2026 HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity rescinded its 2020 assistance-animal notice and moved to a training-based enforcement posture, under which a request to waive a pet policy for an untrained support animal is no longer presumptively reasonable. That is enforcement guidance, not settled law, formal rulemaking is expected, and many state and local laws are broader and were not affected by it. That guidance is about housing. For a short holiday stay the federal definition that usually applies is the ADA's, which has always been limited to an animal individually trained to do work or perform a task, so the change alters less for most Houfy stays than it might appear. On Houfy we ask you to consider a support-animal request in good faith and on its facts. Unless the law where your property is says otherwise, you are not required to accept an untrained support animal, and you may apply your normal pet fee to one. Several states and cities protect support animals more broadly than federal guidance does. You may not use the request as a reason to refuse the booking itself.
If you are unsure where your state or country stands, check before you refuse. If a property genuinely cannot accommodate a request, say so plainly and explain why. That is a different conversation from refusing to have it.
No retaliation
If a guest or host raises a concern under this page — with you, with us, or with a regulator — you may not retaliate. That means no cancellation, no punitive review, no threat, and no change to what you had already agreed, on account of the complaint. Retaliation is a separate violation of this page and we act on it separately, whether or not the original complaint is upheld.
If you are hosting or staying outside the United States
The principle is the same everywhere, but the law is not. Most countries have their own equality or anti-discrimination rules covering accommodation, and some protect categories the US list does not. In the EU and the UK, national equality legislation generally covers the supply of accommodation to the public and is enforced by a national equality body. You are responsible for the rules where your property is. Houfy's rule applies on top of them, not instead of them.
If you think you have been discriminated against
Tell us. Use the report control on the listing or on the member's profile — that is the fastest route and it reaches the right team. You can also email info@houfy.com or use the contact form at houfy.com/contactus. Include the listing, the dates, and any messages. We investigate, and we act on accounts that break this rule — up to and including removing them.
You can also complain to a regulator, and for most stays it will not be HUD. Which body to approach depends on the stay:
For a short or holiday stay, the usual route is your state, county or city civil rights, human rights or consumer protection agency, most of which cover places of public accommodation. These are generally the fastest.
Where a stay was long enough, or residential enough, to be housing, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development takes fair housing complaints at hud.gov/fairhousing.
The US Department of Justice enforces Title II of the Civil Rights Act against places of lodging.
Outside the US, your national equality body is the equivalent route.
Every one of these has a filing deadline, and they are not the same deadline. Check it on the agency's own page and do not leave it. If you may want to bring a claim yourself, speak to a lawyer early — a lawyer where the property is, not where you live.
Complaining to us does not stop you complaining to them, and it does not affect your rights.
What we do
We treat discrimination as a serious violation. Depending on what happened we may remove the listing or the content, cancel a booking, restrict the account, or close it.
We will tell you what we found and why. If you think we got it wrong, reply to the message we sent you, or write to info@houfy.com, within 30 days. A person will look at it again.
Changes
We update these Guidelines as the platform changes, and change the date at the top.