Posted on 12/27/2018 9:51:32 AM PST by bgill
With slews of tent encampments in a fast-growing city flush with tech-sector cash, it’s tough questioning Seattle’s serious problem with homelessness and affordable housing. But an unprecedented new city law — forbidding landlords from checking into potential renters’ criminal past — is very much in dispute and setting up a closely-watched court battle. Landlords argue their free speech, property rights and possibly their safety is being jeopardized by a law that forces them to close their eyes to relevant public information about possible tenants. They’re backed by landlord groups and background screeners who call the ordinance a perilous precedent. The “Fair Chance Housing Act” was anything but that, according to landlords’ lawyers. Ethan Blevins, an attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, said the law’s premise “is this paternalistic idea that the city gets to decide what information is relevant or important to a landlord’s decision making process.”
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Really, many of these men won’t likely be fully rehabilitated unless they can find a good woman to marry.
So I guess it should be illegal for women to reject an offer for a date or living together or marriage due to felon status.
As a landlord with multi-family properties, I call BS on your ideas.
My business model is that I keep my units filled, my tenants happy, and my rents coming in, by operating a family friendly, squeaky clean complex. I will always prefer a family I think will appreciate a family atmosphere over people with a history of drug offenses. And my experience has been that tenants with a history of petty theft means that cars in the parking lot are going to be subject to burglary and vandalism. Low-life tenants litter the grounds with cigarette butts and miscellaneous trash. What is unfair about excluding those with a probability of being bad tenants? There are places with less stringent rules.
Are you telling me I can't run my business on my model?
I follow the law and do not discriminate on the basis of any protected attributes, but being blind to past bad behavior is just asking for trouble. Actions have consequences and prior criminal behavior is an indication of a bad attitude.
After so many incidents, the property is seized by liberal bureaucrats.
Yes, I found the same. Within same year or two, once I could show ability to pay no one cared. It still irks me when I get a form asking if I have EVER filed bankruptcy.
Real Estate Investment Trusts
Never ever get a Chase card. Evil criminals. Hubby brought one in to our marriage and spent forever trying to get the balance to zero. Couldn’t. Paid it off every month but they had some bleepin’ policy that the couple weeks between them mailing the statement and when they credited the account (before the due date), interest accrued even with no new purchases. Never heard of such bs from any other card. Talked and talked to them but they could never resolve it. Finally, wrote them a larger check to cover any mysterious invisible and highly illegal (imo) interest and told them what they could do with their card.
Having owned, been rentee, and renter, I have zero sympathy for owners sued for bias or discrimination of any form. End of day it is a business transaction, nothing more or less.
We had thought of moving and renting this place out to vacationers. Then reality hit. Sure, there’s good money to be made but I’d just as soon not have them stealing everything not nailed down.
We had problems with kiddo’s college roommates not paying their share. That’s probably why they’re filthy rich and we’re not. Every other month we got a notice from the complex saying they hadn’t received all the rent and we’d have to argue that we paid our share. Yeah, yeah, we shouldn’t have signed the contract. I threw a hissy fit and refused to be a party but Mr. b went ahead and signed it. Of course, I was the one who had to devote hours to making them pay and keep our credit good.
Remember when Wells Fargo loaned money for houses to illegals?
So....you’re supposed to follow a law that makes you ignore people that don’t follow the law?
The city can not enforce such a law.
If you can’t show you are not a criminal, go somewhere else to live.
If your are a criminal, your rent goes up time ten.
A 30 year old bankruptcy is a bit different than knifing someone in the alley behind the bar.
yes i do!!! next door neighbors bought 2 houses in the ‘hood. Trashed the one next door to me- moved over to their other house. Trashed that 1 also....surprise!
Loans were taken out in little old lady’s name- family that moved in ( and showed up to the closing, per the seller) no abuela in sight. Bank of America’s done some damage in that category as well.
Insurance companies now routinely check your credit rating before providing insurance. IMO that should be illegal. If I have the money up front to pay for insurance, and a good driving record, which can be proven from state motor vehicle records, my credit rating is none of their business, period.
Landlords will set credit score and deposit requirements high enough to screen out 95% of the “undesirables”.
Thomas Sowell’s “Discrimination and Discrepancies” book busts the liberal myths behind this law.
Companies that do criminal background checks hire MORE blacks instead of less, because they can vet and exclude the criminals. Ban background checks, and they simply hire fewer lower class people and fewer ethnic minorities.
They’ll sell them to buyers who can afford them, excluding the renting poor.
The alternatives are renting out on AirBnB for income or renting it out as work-space / storage.
Chase bought my home mortgage from Citi who bought it from Allied who bought it from First Tenn Bank who originated it in 2009
My only real credit card is a Bass Pro Mastercard underwritten by a major bank
Which also just got switched from BOA when Bass bought Cabelas
U have to have a credit card today to rent cars sadly
I bet she’d have a hard time getting an auto loan
But good luck
Going through life with zero credit would very tough to create businesses
You’d need a lot of rich equity partners
My oldest son has no credit either
Same reason
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