CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Charlottesville resident Barbara Fitch has been keeping an eye on local real estate since the city adopted a new zoning ordinance earlier this year, and a recent online listing for a house for rent stopped her in her tracks. The three-bedroom home in the historically black 10th and Page neighborhood was listed for over $4,300 a month, an amount she found shockingly high. But it was a warning in the fine print that really grabbed her attention.

“Please note that Page St. is located near a low-income neighborhood,” the listing reads. “Our location is very walkable to UVA Grounds and downtown, but we recognize that not everyone will feel comfortable.”

“What I saw was that certainly it was an inclusion of discriminatory information. Why did the property manager find it necessary to mention the proximity to a low-income neighborhood,” Fitch said in an interview on Charlottesville Right Now. “This seems discriminatory, and it raises questions about what exactly are they implying and then what message does that send to potential renters?”

Fitch says the warning was also insulting to the people who live in the neighborhood.

“To me… it paints a very unfair and negative picture to a community of residents and long-term residents who’ve lived in this neighborhood for most of their lives,” Fitch said. “And then it’s the association of safety with income. And to me, safety is not determined by income, and it’s a stereotype that’s very harmful.”

The home was listed by a Central Virginia short-term rental company called Be Still Getaways, which boasts dozens of properties across Charlottesville and the Shenandoah Valley. Fitch says she posted the listing on her Facebook page and tagged residents of the neighborhood, with whom she attends church, and Charlottesville Mayor Juandiego Wade. She says for 10th and Page residents, seeing the listing was “very emotional” but she got no response from Wade.

In the days that followed, the company did remove the warning from the listing. A phone message and email to Be Still management requesting comment was not returned.

In an emailed response to Charlottesville Right Now, Wade called the listing “bad advertising and very unfortunate” but declined further comment.

A prominent local real estate expert says it’s more than just bad advertising. In fact, the listing may have been illegal.

“My immediate gut reaction is this could truly be a fair housing violation and it needed to be taken down,” said S. Lisa Herndon, a real estate agent with Keller Williams Alliance and the immediate past president of the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors. “It just describes things that are not relevant to the property.”

Herndon explains that the Fair Housing Act was enacted in 1968 because of discrimination initially based largely around race.

“If you deal in buying and selling or renting or leasing real estate, you are expected to have fair housing education. You should know the rules around Fair Housing,” Herndon told Charlottesville Right Now.

Violations of the Fair Housing Act are not always overtly racist, and Herndon says a violation can occur even without any intent.

“That’s why in order to reduce liability, you need to get educated,” she said. She also notes that having a diverse staff can help companies avoid violations.

“The value of having a diverse ethnic staff is that they could have added that perspective to that listing, like, ‘Oh, hey, you may not see it this way, but this comes off in a very derogatory, possibly discriminatory way that we need to reword. Let’s focus on the actual physical characteristics of the property because what you’re saying has nothing to do with whether or not somebody should come rent or buy the property.”

Additionally, Herndon says real estate professionals have no business making any kind of safety recommendations about properties.

“Consumers are welcome to go to the State Police website on their own and find that information out,” she said. “My thing is to get you in the property and to make sure it meets your criteria based on its physical characteristics. That’s it. You do your own due diligence about the specific demographics of the neighborhood or whatever you find that you need to make you want to purchase or lease that home.”

Listen to the full interview with Barbara Fitch here.

Listen to the full interview with S. Lisa Herndon here.