If you`ll be apartment hunting in the next few weeks, remember that Big Brother Landlord will be watching, checking up on you in a manner that might scare even devout fans of George Orwell`s paranoid book ”1984.”
With a mix of high-tech services and low-tech legwork, landlords are screening and scrutinizing prospective tenants as never before, searching for past rental sins like evictions and late rent payments or probing for credit problems like bad checks or unpaid loans.
The realm of invasiveness is not limited to the past, either. In screening you, landlords often ask about your income, job and the number of people who will occupy the apartment; they also may require you to cover the cost of a credit check or pay a security deposit upfront.
In fact, says one Chicago tenant organizer, though landlords cannot discriminate on the basis of race, religion or family status, they can pretty much ask a possible tenant about anything else-as long as they ”do the same to every prospective tenant who walks in the door.”
”A landlord can ask pretty much anything, but they have to ask everybody the same thing,” says Tim Carpenter, executive director of the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, based in Chicago`s Lake View community. Though Carpenter and other tenant rights activists are concerned with the range of freedom landlords are given, particularly because the latitude allows them to discriminate against some renters, screening is, as another tenant organizer puts it, ”a necessity.”
”We`re really interested in having landlords adopt good screening criteria,” says Ralph Scott, executive director of the Rogers Park Tenants Committee. ”We see both extremes of landlords, who don`t do any screening at all, (and) consequently you end up with drug dealers (living in the building), and we also see the other extreme, indirectly where landlords use (legal)
screening procedures to keep children or people on public aid out of buildings. We try to find some balance.”
How can you, as a prospective renter, obtain that same balance and fairness? By knowing what a landlord can legally ask, what types of questions are discriminatory and what the norm is for screening procedures. Also, by following a bit of expert advice-mostly that honesty is the best policy-you stand a better chance of being treated fairly by the person who may be your next landlord.
Credit checks
Of all screening procedures, few individuals on either side of the housing coin would dispute a landlord`s right to check a tenant`s credit history and probable ability to pay rent.
That could include verifying your stated income as accurate and sufficient to cover rent as well as verification that you are employed and in good standing at your present position.
”(Credit checks) are OK and fair enough,” says Sandra Moore, vice president of RELCON, a Chicago area apartment-finding service. ”The landlord is basically agreeing to give (the tenant) something worth several thousand dollars and in return, they want something to show good faith on (the tenant`s) part that they`re going to get their apartment back in good shape, and that they`re going to get paid,” she says.
”In truth, (under a lease) what you`re saying is that in one year`s time I`ll pay you a (certain amount of money) for this apartment. It`s almost like negotiating timed payments,” she says. ”So landlords want to see if you`re a creditworthy person.”
In recent months, however, the problems of credit reporting agencies have been detailed in the media. While many of the mistakes on credit reports are accidental, some are not.
”The types of things that most often show up as inaccuracies are not just inadvertent errors, but they are things that have been reported by someone deliberately that are not accurate,” says Scott.
But, even if you have a few black marks on your credit report, that doesn`t mean you won`t get an apartment. Be honest, advises Jeanette Bergstrom, owner of Apartments! Apartments! Apartments!, a Chicago location firm. Landlords will often overlook some debts, she says, particularly student loans and medical bills.
”They`re high-ticket items, and if the person has good rental history but has a bad student loan, (landlords) should overlook that, and usually do,” she says.
Credit checks often require a fee, usually about $25, to cover the cost of the report itself. While the idea of the fee itself is fair, tenants should know that landlords who subscribe to credit services often receive discounts. Still other landlords are just as apt to pocket the fee and simply call the old landlord, says Scott.
Rental history
Any call to a previous landlord, by the way, is fair game in the screening process. In fact, say several housing professionals, a call to a previous landlord may be the fairest way to screen a tenant.
Present rental history is something else a great many landlords will ask about. ”When we pre-screen somebody, we ask them when their lease is up,”
says Bergstrom. ”We also ask if they`re breaking a lease. That`s really critical because we don`t want to ever put anybody in a position where they`re paying double rent because that`s a risk that could ruin their credit.”
Past evictions are perhaps the greatest cause of concern for most landlords. ”We ask them point blank: `Do you have any evictions?` And a lot of times people say no, but if there`s already a red flag up (in their screening application), we grill them a little bit more,” says Bergstrom.
”If they have evictions and they`re honest about it, we can still place
(them), unless they`re being thrown out right now and have the sheriff right on their tail,” she says.
One screening service that several Chicago-area landlords use to check past evictions is called The Registry, which is linked with other credit reporting agencies and, through its Registry Check service, provides landlords with a prospective tenant`s history of court records, including suits, judgments, writs, rent notices and evictions-as well as cases that have been dismissed. The Registry is now marketing a new service that will inform landlords-and local law enforcement officials-if a prospective tenant is a wanted fugitive.
Family status
Some tenants probably wish they had a similar service to check into the history and court records of landlords, particularly those who have been guilty of illegal discrimination against rental applicants.
One of the frequent types of discrimination that occurs in the Chicago area is against families, according to fair housing experts. The federal Fair Housing Act, in effect since March 1989, makes it illegal for a landlord to discriminate against families with children under the age of 18.
Still, a two-year study by three local fair housing groups found that families with children trying to rent apartments in four Chicago communities- Rogers Park, Lake View, Logan Square and South Shore-were discriminated against 58 percent of the time.
The report, titled ”No Children Allowed,” documented landlord refusals, steering of families to other buildings or leases containing more difficult terms for families.
”There`s nothing clearly written out in the law, but there are certain questions that would lead us to believe a landlord is discriminating,” says Julia Good, outreach coordinator for the Metropolitan Tenants Organization.
If a landlord asks a prospective woman renter if she is pregnant, or asks parents about the sex of their children, that behavior is clearly discriminatory, says Good.
Other questions, like ”How old are your children?” tend to get more into a gray area where a landlord could justify refusal to rent based on space limitations of a unit, says Good. The same question, however, asked with the goal of keeping teenagers out of a building, would be discriminatory, says Good.
Landlords can, however, set a standard for the number of people who may occupy a certain unit. That standard, in turn, would allow them the right to ask a prospective tenant how many people would be living in an apartment, which is one way landlords can subtly discriminate against families, according to Good.
Still, says Carpenter, the occupancy standard has to apply across the board. ”You can`t deny a mother and three children an apartment based on the number of people, then turn around and rent it to four college students,” he says.
Marital status
While landlords are not supposed to discriminate against families, there are cases where they can discriminate against cohabiting renters who aren`t related.
In 1990, for example, a Wheaton landlord was sued for refusing to rent apartments to two unmarried couples based on the religious belief that sex outside marriage is immoral. While a state court panel later sided with the renter, ruling that landlords do not have to rent to unmarried couples who want to live together, the impact has been limited because the case involved landlords with highly personal religious beliefs.
The ruling came despite an Illinois Human Rights Ordinance (Chicago has a similar fair housing ordinance) that prohibits discrimination based on marital status.
Even with bigger management companies, says Sandra Moore, it`s usually OK for a landlord to ask about marital status on a credit check because married couples usually have credit in one name while cohabitants do not. And a landlord has every right to request a credit application for each of the unmarried co-dwellers.
Race and religion
Several federal, state and local laws prohibit landlords from discriminating against would-be renters on the basis of their race, religion or ethnic background. In general, a landlord who asks a prospective tenant questions about his or her racial, religious or ethnic background would be in violation of those laws, says Carpenter.
”Depending on the place (tenants) are applying to, they`re going to have to meet different regulations and different criteria,” says Moore. ”There are some places that want you to be employed for a year; different places have different income requirements for similar apartments; some places will take somebody that has a bankruptcy in their background, others won`t. It`s entirely an individual decision.”
