Here is Tristan’s letter describing the event.

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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

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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.

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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).

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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

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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?

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I wholeheartedly agree that this is import on a number of levels.  First, if you have a well written criteria and follow it with all applicants you will protect yourself from Fair Housing claims.  Secondly, if you have a well written criteria you are less likely to bend your rules and end up with a tenant that won’t work out.

Remember that every owner needs to develop their own criteria to meet their own needs. A copy of ours is attached below.

Developing an acceptable criteria is a juggling act between many  opposing forces.  You need to fill your units, but if you chose applicants that don’t pay their bills, cause damage or engage in criminal activities you will lose more than you collect.

In regard to criminal records there are neighborhood advocates that believe no person with a criminal history should be allowed to live in their neighborhood.  At the same time there are also very active fair housing and criminal rights advocates that believe that it should be illegal to use criminal records  for ANY rental screening purpose.  (See DefeatAB340.org for more info on legislative efforts to restrict access to criminal records)  The latter group makes the argument that how can society expect people to reenter the community and succeed if no one will give them a job or a home.

We attempt to balance all of these concerns to the best of our ability in our criteria.  A copy of our criteria is give to all applicants along with the application. There is no legal requirement to have a written screening criteria, but having one will help you withstand allegations that you illegally discriminated against an applicant that you rejected.

But our criteria should not be adopted without considering your own needs and opinions.

Note: Many of the documentation items that Tristan has on his criteria sheet are on our “Documents Required to Apply” sheet, such as proof of income, proof of current address, government issued ID…

Affordable Rentals Milwaukee New Applicant Criteria

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