Question:  If there is a  material falsification of information provided by a tenant on the  rental application, what are your options? (Granted a good screening process should have caught it).

Once you accept a tenant you must allow them to move in, even if they  materially falsified the app. This is covered under the ATCP 134:

ATCP 134.09(6) (6) FAILURE TO DELIVER POSSESSION. No landlord shall fail to deliver  possession of the dwelling unit to the tenant at the time agreed upon  in the rental agreement, except where the landlord is unable to  deliver possession because of circumstances beyond the landlord’s  control.

An interesting question would be if they lied about who they were,  i.e. gave a false name, could you refuse to let anyone but the person named on the lease to move in?

Preventing this? Hard. If you ran a credit report, that should have show other names used. A pre-acceptance home visit may have exposed the inconsistencies and extra adult.

This one bit us in the butt a few years ago. We were evicting a woman because her two adult daughters had moved in with her and were  performing prostitution in the basement of the building. We had an applicant for a different address who we accepted. One of my managers saw the woman we accepted in the waiting room and asked what she was doing her as she was the prostitute daughter of the tenant we were  evicting from Walker street.

We refused to allow the woman to take the other unit and gave her back all of her money. She got an attorney and they won the  argument in court. We were required to give her  $500 in addition to her earnest money, which we had already given back.

There is this online company, Airbnb, that lets you rent your house to complete strangers for hundreds of  dollars a week.  The company has a $1.3 billion dollar valuation.  Well at least they did until last week. I think the name stands for air (as in online) bed and breakfast.

The company became big news when, surprise, surprise, news breaks that some tenants trash homes.

It seems Airbnb’s business model was based on the idea that most people respect the place they are renting

The vast majority of our community members genuinely respect and protect each other 

I guess they should have had a few actual landlords in their focus groups as they set up the business model.  Every landlord would have foreseen this.

A question was raised on one of the email list I subscribe to:

I need a set of screening criteria to use so I can weed out unpotential renters. Does anyone have a set they use. Also I am in Wisconsin, are their things you can and can not include?

In WI you cannot include any of the “Seven Deadly Sins” i.e. violations of ATCP 134.08. An overview of prohibited WI  lease terms can be found here.

A screening criteria is not  one size fits all.  Rather you must formulate it match your property, the community the property is in (college neighborhoods have a different set of concerns from an upper income condo, which is different from rural farm housing, which is different from lower income urban areas…) , your management style etc.
A properly written and enforced screening criteria can save you some hassle if fair housing questions are raised.   A poorly written criteria or one that is not evenly enforced will aggravate your problems if a fair housing complaint is filed.

For example a husband and wife who happen to be the same ethnic background as you apply.  Your criteria is income must be 3 times rent.  They make $2500 a month and want to rent your $950 three bedroom unit.  You like them, they seem like nice people.  So you accept their application even though they should earn $2850 to meet the criteria.

A month later a little green man from mars applies.  His job with NASA pays $1200 a month.  He wants to rent your $500 one bedroom.  You say “Sorry, our criteria is income must be three times rent.  You would have to make $1500 to qualify”  Uncle Martin (the Martian from my favorite Martian)  goes to HUD to complain.  Through their investigation they uncover that you bent your rules for those applicants that looked and talked like you, but refused to do so for little green people from Mars.  You are now facing a much bigger problem than had you had no screening criteria at all.

As to income criteria make certain that you don’t violate fair housing as to lawful sources of income.  For example requiring a recent pay stub to document income is troublesome as there are many lawful sources of income that do not provide pay stubs.  SSI, W-2, Child Support if applicant wishes to include it, retirement benefits,  and many more.  You must also include food stamps n.k.a SNAP in any income based criteria.

You can change your criteria at will, however all those screed after the change must be held to the same standards.

Our company’s criteria for rejection includes:

• First time tenants may be required to have a collectable cosigner
• Evictions within past 3 years
• Felony drug or violent crime convictions in 5 years
• Misdemeanor drug or disorderly charges in past 3 years
• Non verifiable income or insufficient income
• Non verifiable rental history or bad reference from any prior landlord

We have debated our criteria with neighborhood groups who would want a one strike and your out policy that would reject someone for having a misdemeanor possession charge twenty years ago, and with tenant advocacy groups that feel Charlie Manson and Attila the Hun both should be accepted.   Neither group likes them, but neither could find legal fault with them either.

NOTE: Our criteria would be illegal in Dane County and Madison due to criminal background being a protected class in those communities.

I think this is an important enough issue to share it here  - cleaned up from my original post :

While language is neither a Federal nor a Wisconsin protected class,  you need to be careful that the rejection is is not perceived to be discrimination against national origin, which is a protected class.

If you were rejecting applicants that do not speak English how would you respond to a hearing impaired applicant?  They do not speak English yet are clearly a protected class.

Even if you avoid a discrimination claim with your policy of only accepting people who spoke English you will be harming your business in the process by limiting the pool of prospective tenants  for your vacancies.

I do not speak Spanish, however we built a heck of a business by making our company more accessible to Milwaukee’s large Spanish speaking population by hiring bilingual front line staff.  Our occupancy, and therefore collection rates, are far above what our competitors are telling us theirs are.

We also have had many tenants that speak neither English nor Spanish and have not had any serious problems due to this.  Most come to apply with an interpreter.   In most metropolitan areas there are also organizations such as the Spanish Center or Hmong Community.  We had a Russian tenant who spoke very little English.  We were able to communicate with them through a pastor at their church.

You should get the interrupter’s contact information so you are prepared if a future need arises. Also a quick internet search will most likely find an organization that can help you communicate with the tenant.

So you may find trying to work through the language barriers to be a bit more difficult, but also reaping rewards for the efforts.

Attorney Tristan Pettit is presenting the Landlord Boot Camp again this February.  Prior Boot Camps were very well received, with positive feed back from all that attended

Here is Tristan’s letter describing the event.

An interesting, soon to be published Wisconsin case on denial of a rental applicant.  This probably has little impact except for Section 8 applicants, but it could also be a basis for Fair housing questions too.

The Housing Authority denied an application because the prospective tenant had been found guilty in a default judgment on municipal citations for disorderly conduct, and assault and battery

Read the case here

Saturday I had just locked up the office and heading home as I saw a U-  Haul truck pull up. Thinking perhaps they were a move in that arrived late I asked if I could help them.

Well seemed that they were in need of an apartment immediately.  Sorry it takes at least 3 days for us to process an app and you have to see an apartment first I told them as I  started getting back into my truck.

‘Wait! Wait!’ the older lady  yelled. ‘We used to be one of your best tenants before we moved to Chicago and we have all the money for rent and deposit’

Well if they were indeed prior good tenants, then we could do something for them. I reopened the office and pulled up their records. Yes they had been tenants.

No they were not one of our  best tenants. In fact we evicted them in June of 2006 and they  retaliated by breaking all the windows as they left. I pointed this  out to the lady. Her adult son said ‘See Momma, I told this was ONE of the landlords that evicted us.’

As they walked I ran a CCAP.  Indeed two other owners had evicted them after us, and neither was in Chacago.

I am sure that some landlord was willing to take their $1,200  Saturday afternoon and will not regret it until at least mid December.

In an earlier post we spoke of fair housing laws. So what are the protected classes?

All states and many municipalities have their own protected classes in addition to the federal protections.   These protections are:

Note: if you are outside of Milwaukee, Dane County or City of Madison, there still may be local ordinances that affect you, but are not listed here.  If you are aware of a local ordinance please post a link  in the comments section below

Federal Fair Housing Protected Classes (Link to Federal Classes)

• Race Color
• Family Status
• Disability
• Sex
• Religion

Wisconsin Fair Housing Protected Classes (Link to §106.50)

• Race
• Family Status
• Sexual Orientation
• Source of Income
• Disability
• Ancestry
• Sex
• Marital Status
• Religion
• National Origin
• Color
• Age

City of Milwaukee Fair Housing Protected Classes(Link to Ch. 109)

• sex
• race
• religion
• color,
• national origin or ancestry
• age
• disability
• lawful
• source of income
• marital status
• sexual orientation
• gender identity or expression,
• past or present membership in the military service,
• familial status,

Madison and Dane County Addition to State and Federal Classes (Link)

• type of military discharge
• arrest or conviction record (limited protections)
• physical appearance
• political beliefs
• student status
• victims of domestic abuse or other crimes (limited protections)
• refusal to disclose Social Security Number (City of Madison only).

Wisconsin CCAP (The WI Circuit Court Automation Program), which is under attack by some legislators,  provides free access to WI evictions, criminal and civil court cases.  This is invaluable in checking out prospective tenants, thereby avoiding nonpaying and disruptive tenants.

What resources are available for similar screening searches outside of WI?  I have attached the list of the ones we have identified.  Our list currently has resources for about half the states, but not all counties in all of those states. Some are free as is WI, others we have found so far are fee based.

So let’s  ”crowdsource” a more complete list.  The results will be shared here for all of us to use when screening out of state tenants.  If you have found other or better resources please post them to the comments on this page.  I will update this list and repost it as additional resources are identified.

Continue reading to see the list we already have assembled .  Clicking on a state’s name will take you to that point on the list.

Sources of screening reports

• Public Data Corp

Public Records – Criminal / Eviction

• Birth date finder (Not necessarily real useful in most searches)

Alabama

• Alabama On Demand (State run fee based)

Alaska

• Alaska Civil & Criminal Cases

Arizona

• AZ Civil & Criminal Cases

Arkansas

California

Colorado

• CO Civil & Criminal cases -$6 per search

Connecticut

• CT Civil & Criminal Cases

Delaware

• DE Civil & Criminal (Fee based, but docket slips are free)

Florida

• Many, but not all Florida counties

Georgia

Hawaii

• HI Civil & Criminal Cases

Idaho

• Idaho Criminals on Parole or Probation

Illinois

• Cook County (Chicago)
• Most other IL Counties

Indiana

• IN Criminal Convictions
• IN Civil & Criminal – 46 Counties (Fee based)
• Indianapolis /Marion County

Iowa

• IA Criminal & Civil Cases

Kansas

• KS Civil & Criminal Cases

Kentucky

• KY Civil & Criminal Cases

Louisiana

Maine

Maryland

• MD Civil & Criminal Cases

Massachusetts

• MA Civil & Criminal Cases

Michigan

Minnesota

• MN Criminal Convictions
• MN Civil & Criminal Case records

Mississippi

Missouri

• MO Civil & Criminal cases

Montana

Nebraska

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Jersey

• Records request

New Mexico

• New Mexico

New York

• NY Civil & Criminal Cases

North Carolina

• Background checks

North Dakota

Ohio

Oklahoma

• OK Civil & Criminal cases

Oregon

• Oregon Case Records (State Run, Fee based)

Pennsylvania

• Pennsylvania public court record site

Rhode Island

• RI Criminal Cases

South Carolina

• South Carolina Case Records Search

South Dakota

• South Dakota Criminal and Civil Records (By mail only)

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

• Utah XChange (State run, Fee based)

Vermont

Virginia

• VA Civil & Criminal Cases
• Court Records Management system

Washington

Washington Court Directory (Search by court. Some are online)

West Virginia

West Virginia (Search by court. Some are online)

Wisconsin

• Wisconsin Court Records

Wyoming

There as been a lot of discussion on and off the ApartmentAssoc@YahooGroups.com regarding screening criteria, whether it is necessary to have a written criteria and should you provide that criteria to prospective tenants.

Fair housing is a complex set of laws.  Even if you absolutely follow the rules and their intentions you can find yourself “defending your life” so to speak.  Better the records and documentation, the better you will be able to ward off false allegations.

Here is our personal experience with HUD Fair Housing:

In December 2007 an applicant from NYC applied to rent from us. Her most  recent employment was with a NYC temp agency. Although she put on the application that she was moving to Milwaukee to seek work, she  had no proof of a job offer.  We also had no means of verifying her  prior rental history or checking for NY evictions.

If she could not prove she had the resources to pay the rent it probably would not work out.  We told her we could accept her only if she could provide an acceptable cosigner.  She came in with a cosigner from Chicago, which  was not acceptable as it is pretty hard to collect a judgment  from an out of  state person in WI courts. So she was rejected.

Fast forward a couple of months. We receive a certified letter from HUD. The rejected prospective tenant from NY was alleging that  we denied her due to her being Hispanic.

Well this would be an easy one, I mistakenly thought.

The office manager who rejected the application was born in PR.  45% of our  tenants are Hispanic.  61% of our employees were Hispanic.  My wife is Hispanic. Her  parents were living in Vega Bajo, PR at the time of the complaint. Our company has donated to the Latino Community Center and has been one of the sponsors of Milwaukee’s Fiesta Boricua.

Our reasons for rejection were legitamate and followed our written criteria: 1) No verifiable current source of income; 2) No verifiable recent rental history.

So at that point I’m not real concerned of the complaint going anywhere.  It was a slight nuisance to spend an hour or so reviewing the file  and drafting a response. But I am comfortable that our process would withstand the scrutiny of HUD or anyone else, even absent a Hispanic  staff and wife. We had a written application with her hand written responses that did not include any WI income sources. We also have  the cosigners application that clearly shows he did not live in WI.  Plus we provide our screening criteria to prospective tenants as an attachment to our applications.

Once the investigator looks over our documentation supporting our reason for rejecting the applicantion the complaint will be dismissed, I mistakenly thought.

We were able to prove to the satisfaction of the federal investigator that indeed 45% of our tenants are Hispanic as is 61% of our workforce, including the employee who rejected the app for lack of verifiable income.

The woman amended her complaint saying that we discriminated against her as a single mother.  Well we have lots of single mom tenants, which we were again able to prove.

End of story right? Wrong!

No, the complaint was then amended that she is a Hispanic single mom with two kids and “everybody knows Hispanics think Hispanic single moms are bad risks”  (her statement, not ours.  In fact the woman who ran the application was a Hispanic single mom) So now we had to show all the screening we’ve done exclusively on Hispanic single moms.

We mailed 220 pages of application copies, spent hours pulling old records and doing phone interviews with the investigator.  He was at our office half a day looking at applications and tenant records as well as interviewing employees.  That we have our tenant docs scanned and digitalized really made this a lot more manageable.

As the investigator looked at each app he questioned things like ‘Why did you run a credit report on this one, but not that one.’ Well the latter had 5 evictions on CCAP so we didn’t need the credit report to see they were an unacceptable risk.   ’Why did you print out this CCAP case for your file, but not that case.’  Well the first case was an eviction, so we wanted it for our records.  The second case was a speeding ticket, which we really didn’t care about as we are renting houses not fast cars.

A constant theme throughout this was the investigator saying ‘I’d like to call you tomorrow with a settlement offer so we won’t need to go through this any more’ to which we constantly replied ‘We do not illegally discriminate, we have good records and therefore are not interested in any settlement offer.’  My position is I will spend twenty grand on attorneys  before I will allow us to be extorted out of $10 and have a discrimination blemish on our record.

Every app we have run is well documented, but a fair housing complaint was still troublesome.

After this experience I would not sleep at night if we were like so many other owners who rely on telephone prescreening or anything else that is not written, photocopied etc.  If you didn’t like the tenant’s income how would you prove how much  it was at the time if you didn’t have a photocopy of a pay stub or award letter?  If you didn’t copy the ID how do you prove you screened the right person.  He said Sam Johnson, you screened Sam Johnson and found a lot of bad stuff. When the fair housing complaint comes in from Sam Johnston (note the “t”) with a rental history as pure as the driven snow how do you prove yourself?