Posted on 04/11/2016 5:32:57 AM PDT by Kaslin
You're a private landlord, renting apartments in a building you bought with your savings from years of hard work and modest living. You take pride in maintaining your property, keeping it clean, comfortable, and attractive. You charge a fair rent and treat your tenants with courtesy and respect. Your tenants, in turn, appreciate the care you put into the building. And they trust you to screen prospective tenants wisely, accepting only residents who won't jeopardize the building's safe and neighborly character. That's why you only consider applications from individuals who are employed or in school, whose credit scores are strong, and who have no criminal record.
Most Americans would look at you and likely see a prudent, levelheaded property owner. Not the Obama administration. The Department of Housing and Urban Development warned last week that landlords who refuse to rent to anyone with a criminal record are in violation of the Fair Housing Act and can be prosecuted and fined for racial discrimination.
In a 10-page "guidance" issued on April 4, the federal agency announced that any landlord with a blanket policy of not renting to people with a criminal conviction is effectively discriminating on the basis of race or national origin. "Because of widespread racial and ethnic disparities in the US criminal justice system," HUD's new guidelines read, "criminal history-based restrictions on access to housing are likely disproportionately to burden African Americans and Hispanics. . . . [T]herefore such a practice would violate the Fair Housing Act."
The administration's argument is twofold. First, because blacks and Hispanics commit crimes and go to prison at much higher rates than whites, a policy of automatically rejecting applicants with a criminal past will have a "disparate impact" on different racial groups. And second, not all convictions are alike, and not everyone with a prior criminal record would be a risky tenant.
Both points are indisputably true. It isn't hard to find examples of ex-convicts who long ago learned their lesson and went straight, yet find it difficult to secure housing because background checks always flag their old offenses. HUD Secretary Julián Castro laments that too many landlords "use the fact of a conviction, any conviction, regardless of what it was for or how long ago it happened," to turn away prospective tenants, thwarting those who "are only looking for a fair chance to be productive members" of society.
Is it reasonable to call attention to the challenges that can shadow people with a criminal record for years? Perfectly. And if HUD were simply urging property owners not to paint with too broad a brush, and to remember that many former prisoners are peaceful and law-abiding, and may make admirable tenants, its guidance would be unobjectionable. But the leap made by the government — condemning any landlord with an across-the-board policy of not renting to former criminals as, in effect, a racist — is outrageous.
The Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to discriminate in the sale or rental of housing "because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin." Felons and former prison inmates are not a protected class under the law. Having a criminal record is not a proxy for being a racial or ethnic minority, and "disparate impact" theory does not make it OK to penalize landlords who are concerned about the safety of their property and the security of their tenants.
Freedom of association is a fundamental human right, and the vitality of our economic life depends on it. A landlord who chooses not to do business with anyone who has a criminal record may not always end up making the wisest choice. But why should any person or entity except the landlord be entitled to make that choice? To be sure, a blanket rule against renting to ex-cons may exclude some potentially wonderful tenants — tenants that another property owner, less inflexible or more savvy, is free to snap up. Absent any evidence of impermissible racial animus, however, the government has no excuse to brand the landlord a de facto bigot, or to prosecute him or her for violating civil rights laws.
HUD's new guidance warns landlords not to rely on "bald assertions based on generalizations" about the risk of renting to people with criminal records. But human beings rely on generalizations all the time, especially when trying to predict the behavior of others. That there are exceptions to a general rule doesn't make the rule unreasonable. In general, a potential tenant's criminal record is a cause for concern. Recidivism rates in the United States are sky-high. Former lawbreakers are not infrequently future lawbreakers: More than 40 percent of offenders return to prison within three years of their release. A property owner with a blanket no-convicts rule is not being irrational, only cautious. And caution — even an abundance of caution — is not a race crime.
By all means, let HUD throw the book at a landlord who rejects only black and Hispanic applicants. Let it crack down on property owners who waive a no-criminal-record policy when the prospective tenant is white. But when a reasonable criterion is applied in a reasonable manner, the feds' only task should be to stay out of the way — not to use the Fair Housing Law as a pretext for unfairly persecuting landlords.
In 2008 he was giving stump speeches in which he told his supporters to “Vote your revenge!”
It appears he really meant that.
Obama also has no problem with you being sued into the grave for any liability from renting to people with criminal records.
“Racist”?
Is he implying that all criminals are black, or that all blacks are criminals?
That’s the precise message that is given. Like it’s OK for Blacks to be criminals, it’s who they are, they cannot help it no more than a homo can help being a homo, therefore we must accept being robbed and murdered as we must accept homos sodomizing our children. After all, it’s only fair.
The problem is only a small fraction of society buy into this crap which is why the Cruz/Trump supporters want to go back to normalcy.
Isn't this funny how this just mysteriously happens this way......?
In the near future, "crimes" will be racist. So we should have no laws at all!
Criminal is not a race, so no.
That horse left the barn in 1964; we do not have a right to free association. The government has the right to determine who we associate with, who we go to school with, who we hire, and who we sell to. It would require a miracle to overturn the thousands of supporting findings in case law that have occurred since.
Its not being racist. It’s called being smart.
I think the Obama administration's fantasy and end game is to disarm the all white citizens then have the #BLM movement go from house to house "repatriating". The white people won't be allowed to defend themselves and must allow the black thugs to steal everything they own and rape the women and beat them. Of couse that won't be enough because nothing is ever enough for the self-entitled thug crowd.
I think the best way around this is when some landlord is forced to rent to an ex-con, they should appeal to their local police department to declare their rentals to be in a “special enforcement zone”.
A special enforcement zone for rental properties is usually involuntary, after the police have repeatedly raided it for tenants engaging in unlawful activity, typically drugs. It means enhanced surveillance and low tolerance for criminal violations.
Most ex-cons avoid such places like the plague.
No. It’s just common sense rental control.
And now even criminals are a protected class.... I guess the common working man just fell another rung on the ladder....
When Malcolm X (?) said "We will enslave you" I guess he wasn't just shucking and jiving was he..?
You only think that you own your property. No. The government has other ideas. It is telling you what to do with it. And to add to the insult, they confiscate 3% every year and call it a “property tax”.
Of the thugs, by the thugs and for the thugs ...
Were that the case.......based solely on race and not criminal activity,........it seems like it would be a problem with the judicial system.
But that makes too much sense evidently.
No, Obama is saying that whites who are convicts DID the crime. But darker skinned people probably Dindu Nuffin. The evil white cops came around and just threw them in jail. And unless you, as a landlord, realize that all the black and Hispanic convicts were just victims of a racist justice system, you’re racist like the evil cops.
A. Barry will have this fully implemented before leaving office
B. I’ll vote for the first candidate who promises to un-implement this, day 1.
IF I rent apartments to people with kids & I am forced by this Obama rule to rent to a sex offender, am I going to get sued when that person goes after another of my tenants kids???
Everything about Obama is upside down.
How would he like to see one of his girls attacked under the aforementioned circumstances???
“The Department of Housing and Urban Development warned last week that landlords who refuse to rent to anyone with a criminal record are in violation of the Fair Housing Act and can be prosecuted and fined for racial discrimination.”
The Democrat Party is on the side of criminals.
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