Tenant screening without discrimination: a hospita guide

Selecting is the part of the hospita process that makes most people nervous. Not because they don't know what they want, usually they know that very well, but because they don't know what they may ask, what they may weigh and how to prove it without later ending up in a discrimination case. The law, the public debate and practice don't always run parallel on this topic, and hospitas notice it in practice through complaints, reports or lost court cases.

In this article we walk through what you can and cannot ask, how the Dutch Equal Treatment Act applies to hospitas, how to use the viewing night as a legitimate selection tool without crossing the line, and how to distinguish gut feeling from prejudice. Plus: practical examples of what works well and what does not.

Which discrimination grounds are forbidden when selecting a housemate?

The Dutch Equal Treatment Act (Algemene wet gelijke behandeling, AWGB) prohibits distinction on the basis of a number of grounds. For housing rentals the following protected categories apply:

• Origin (nationality, ethnicity, race)
• Religion or belief
• Political preference
• Sex/gender
• Sexual orientation
• Civil status (married, unmarried, registered partner)
• Disability or chronic illness (Wgbh/cz)
• Age

In addition, the Dutch Equal Treatment of Disabled Persons Act prohibits specific forms of distinction on that ground, and the Dutch Equal Treatment of Men and Women Act explicitly prohibits sex discrimination.

An important nuance for hospitas: because you continue to live in the same home and so really cohabit with your tenant, an exception applies for selection on the basis of sex. A female hospita who explicitly wants only women as housemates may in principle do so, the exception is laid down in article 7 of the Dutch Equal Treatment Act for "private legal relationships" in which an evident personal interest exists. The same applies to men who only want men.

But note: this exception is narrow and specific to the hospita context in which you live together. For other grounds (origin, sexual orientation, religion) that exception does not exist, even for hospitas. A hospita who is only looking for "Dutch" or "no Moroccan" housemates breaches the law, regardless of how personal cohabitation feels.

In 2023 and 2024 the Dutch Anti-Discrimination Bureau (Bureau Discriminatiezaken) and the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights have made various rulings on hospitas selecting on origin. The fines were limited (often a warning), but the reputational damage and legal time cost you considerably. Plus: there is political pressure to make enforcement tougher.

What can you ask to assess housemates?

A hospita may of course screen on everything that is directly relevant to the tenancy and cohabitation. What falls under "directly relevant" is in practice quite broad:

Financial:

• Income or source of income (steady income, freelance, student grant, benefits)
• Employer or education
• Request for recent pay slips or an employer's statement (last three months is standard)
• Proof of valid insurance (liability, contents)
• Possibly a BKR check (Dutch credit registration), provided you have the applicant's permission

Practical:

• Work or study load (full-time, part-time, working from home)
• Notice period at current home
• Expected move-in date
• Number of people moving into the room
• Smoking (indoor smoking is a legitimate house rule)
• Pets (specifically which animal, because allergies or housing facilities are relevant)

Social:

• How the candidate sees themselves in the household culture (quiet, social, weekday rarely home)
• What the candidate is looking for in a housemate
• Sleep and work rhythm (night owl, morning person, late worker)
• Experience with cohabitation
• References from previous landlords or housemates

Verification:

• ID document (passport or ID card) to verify name and date of birth, not to deduce origin
• Work or education certificate

All allowed, provided it concerns information that is factually relevant to the decision to live together or to ensure the rent will be paid. The golden rule: don't ask more than you need to enter the tenancy responsibly.

What can you not ask or weigh in your selection?

On the other side of the spectrum is the list of questions and criteria that explicitly cannot be asked, even though they are regularly raised in practice. A few examples where it goes wrong:

Not allowed:

• "What is your origin?" or "Where are your parents from?"
• "What is your religion?" or "Do you eat meat?" (when presented as a religion test)
• "Do you have a boyfriend/girlfriend? Or partner of the same sex?"
• "Are you planning to have children?"
• "Do you have a chronic illness?" (unless directly relevant to the housing situation, e.g. in a stair home with mobility limitations)
• "Which political party do you vote for?"
• "Are you married?", unless you are asking whether multiple people will move into the room

Risk areas in practice: There are also questions that look innocent on their own but can act as proxies for forbidden grounds:

• "Do you speak good Dutch?", can be interpreted as an origin criterion. Can you ask whether your prospective housemate speaks Dutch or English? Yes, provided you ask for practical reasons (e.g. because your household culture is in a specific language). Can you require a minimum language level that many non-Dutch candidates don't meet? That is a greyer area, without an objective reason for setting a high language bar, you can be accused of indirect discrimination.

• "What do your parents do?", can be seen as an origin criterion. Stay away.

• "Do you have a steady partner?", can act as a civil-status criterion. Want to know whether a second person will regularly appear in the house? Then ask that: "Will someone regularly stay over with you?", that is relevant and not discriminatory.

A good rule of thumb: if you're not sure whether a question is allowed, ask yourself if the information is directly needed to decide whether you want this person as a housemate. If yes, formulate the question as neutrally as possible. If no, don't ask it.

How do you use the viewing night legitimately as a selection tool?

The Dutch hospita viewing night (hospi-avond) is an invention that hospitas don't have to break the law for. It is in fact one of the few selection tools that is explicitly legitimate for selecting on chemistry and click, two criteria that are otherwise legally hard to substantiate in a regular fitness test.

What makes the viewing night legal:

It is a meeting, not a formal test. You invite candidates on equal footing, you treat them equally, and the assessment takes place based on what you see in interaction. You don't explicitly ask about forbidden criteria, they either come up or don't come up naturally in a normal conversation.

Click is a legitimate criterion. "I can live with this person, not with that other one" is in the hospita legal regime an accepted assessment. The hospita scheme of article 7:232 paragraph 3 of the Dutch Civil Code explicitly recognises that the hospita makes a personal trade-off about whom to take in as a housemate. That is different from a commercial landlord, who assesses a tenant primarily on payment capacity.

Everyone gets the same chance. You invite candidates, you give them all the same time and attention, you ask comparable questions. That way you avoid the accusation that you wrote someone off in advance based on name or photo.

What makes the viewing night unsafe:

Pre-selection on the basis of photo or name. If you only invite "Dutch"-sounding names by default, or only people with white profile photos, you are already discriminating in the pre-selection phase. The fact that you treat people equally during the viewing night doesn't save you.

Selective questioning. If you ask white candidates about their work and candidates of colour about their origin, that is direct discrimination. Keep your questions consistent.

Substantiated reasons afterwards that don't add up. If after the viewing night you tell a rejected candidate "we didn't think you fit with us", but your chosen candidate is conspicuously the same profile as the rejected one minus the "wrong" name, then a judge is likely to see through that if they put the pool of candidates and your selection side by side.

For a complete explanation of viewing nights, see /hospita/gesprek and the Dutch original guide on hospi-avond preparation.

How do you screen effectively in advance with a video call?

For some situations you don't have time or opportunity for a physical viewing night with multiple candidates. A video call beforehand is then an excellent first filter, not to discriminate, but to check for yourself whether a candidate is conversational, speaks Dutch or English at the level required for your household culture, and whether there is a minimum of contact.

A workable protocol for a video call:

Beforehand:

• Make clear in advance that this is a first conversation, not a job interview
• Ask for confirmation by email or WhatsApp and schedule via a tool like /hospita/gesprek
• Give a time indication of fifteen to thirty minutes

During (questions you can ask):

• Introduce yourself: your situation, your household culture, what you're looking for
• Ask the candidate to introduce themselves: work or study, lifestyle, why they are moving
• Ask about sleep and work rhythm, cooking, social weekend behaviour
• Ask about cohabitation experience
• Discuss practical matters: rent, deposit, notice period, start date
• Leave room for questions from the candidate

During (questions to avoid):

• No questions about origin, religion, sexual orientation or partner
• No "where are you originally from?"
• No implicit political or cultural tests ("can you find yourself in our values?")

Afterwards:

• Thank the candidate and indicate when you'll let them know if you're proceeding
• Make notes for yourself directly after the call on factual points (relevant income, work rhythm, impression of conversational ability)

A video call protects not only you, it also saves time: you don't have to invite people who clearly don't match into your home unnecessarily, which saves their time too.

How do you distinguish gut feeling from prejudice?

Here lies the difficult part of practice. Everyone has a gut feeling at first meetings. Sometimes justified, sometimes not. For hospitas this is an important reflection point, not to switch off your intuition entirely, but to test yourself on whether your decision rests on facts or on prejudices.

Good gut-feeling criteria:

• A candidate arrives late without calling, fact, relevant to appointment-keeping behaviour.
• A candidate dodges questions about income or work, fact, relevant to affordability risk.
• A candidate reacts defensively to normal questions about lifestyle, fact, relevant to future communication.
• A candidate has a different energy from the current residents and the match feels forced, chemistry criterion that hospitas may weigh.
• A candidate provably lies (about work, notice period, previous reason for moving), fact, relevant to trust.

Prejudice signals to test yourself against:

• "I have a strange feeling about him", without being able to name a concrete reason, this is often a sign of implicit bias.
• "He doesn't fit with us", if the "us" is a homogeneous group and the candidate is the first deviating background, this is a red flag for yourself.
• "We're looking for someone with our values", if you haven't explicitly named the values in the advertisement, this is an excuse after the fact.

A useful check: when you reject a candidate, write down in two sentences what the factual reason was. If you let a third party who has no idea of the candidate's ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation read those sentences, does it still sound like a valid reason? If yes, fine. If not, you have something to think about.

What do you do if a rejected candidate files a discrimination complaint?

It can happen, particularly in cities where the Anti-Discrimination Bureau is active. A rejected candidate files a complaint with the Netherlands Institute for Human Rights or with a municipal anti-discrimination bureau. What is the procedure and what should you prepare?

Step 1: official information request The Institute or bureau sends you a request for explanation about your selection procedure. You don't have to acknowledge or deny right away, you provide a factual overview.

Step 2: your justification

• How many candidates did you invite? How were they distributed by background?
• Which questions did you ask?
• Why did you choose this one?
• What were the objective reasons for rejection?

Step 3: hearing both sides You get the opportunity to respond to the allegations. Here good documentation is crucial.

What to prepare in advance for a good file:

• Keep your advertisement text (so it's clear you didn't give unintended signals in advance)
• Keep your email correspondence with all candidates (so it's clear you offered equal treatment)
• Make factual notes after each viewing about what was discussed
• Write down your rejection reason as soon as you give it
• Avoid in rejection emails ambiguous wordings like "you don't fit with us", give a factual reason or stick to "we have chosen another candidate"

Possible outcomes:

• No breach found: end of the case.
• Mediation: you have a conversation with the complainant under the guidance of a mediator.
• Ruling of breach: the Institute issues a formal ruling that you have discriminated. This is public and can cause reputational damage. In very severe cases a civil court can award damages to the discriminated candidate.

So far the outcomes in hospita cases in the Netherlands have been relatively mild, often warnings or mediation rather than fines, but the trend is for enforcement to become stricter. Prevention is cheaper than cure.

Frequently asked questions

Can I state in my advertisement that I'm only looking for women or only for men as housemate?

Yes, for hospita situations an exception applies in article 7 of the Dutch Equal Treatment Act: because you really cohabit with your housemate, you may select on sex. Write it neutrally: "Female housemate sought" or "Hospita looking for male room resident". Avoid additional criteria that discriminate on other grounds ("Dutch woman, 25-30, Christian").

Can I ask for a copy of a passport or ID document?

Yes, for verification of name and date of birth. With restrictions: black out the BSN number (citizen service number) and photo (or have the candidate do that themselves before they send it), and keep the copy only as long as needed. You may or may not read the place of birth, but you may not use that as a selection criterion. The Dutch GDPR rules also apply to hospitas.

I want my housemate to speak Dutch because of our household culture. Is that allowed?

A specific language requirement is in principle defensible if you have a legitimate interest, for example because the household speaks only Dutch or because all house rules and household communication are in Dutch. Then write explicitly in your advertisement "Dutch-language communication required" and not "only Dutch nationals". In an Equal Treatment Act review the Institute looks at whether the requirement is proportionate and not functioning as a covert origin criterion.

Can I reject a candidate because they smoke or have a pet?

Yes. Both smoking and pets are legitimate house rules that don't fall under the Equal Treatment Act. Make them explicit: "smoke-free household" or "no pets allowed" in your advertisement. That way you avoid disappointment in advance and gives you a defensible rejection reason afterwards.

What if all candidates have a similar background, can I be accused of discrimination?

Not if that distribution is logical given the candidate pool. If your advertisement is in an English-language student channel, you'll mostly get international candidates. If your advertisement is in a Dutch-language Facebook neighbourhood group, you'll mostly get Dutch-speaking candidates. What counts is that within the pool that comes to you, you offer equal chances and don't pre-select on forbidden grounds.

Want to find the right housemate calmly and fairly?

Good screening is no cross-examination and no blank trust, it's a transparent process in which you ask the right questions and skip the wrong ones. Looking to rent out your room as a hospita without Kamernet pricing or aggressive invitations? On Huismaatje you list your room for free, plan a viewing night with time slots and pick your housemate at your own pace. List your room →