Some of the basics of apartment living just got more complicated.
Landlords across the country are tightening up security in response to the latest FBI warnings, which cited apartment buildings as a potential target. Some have banned package and even pizza deliveries directly to individual apartments. Others are stopping residents from installing second locks on their doors in order to ensure management has access to all apartments.
Landlords are also getting tough with prospective residents. Related Management, a major New York property manager, is now requiring photo identification just to be shown an apartment. The Los Angeles Police Department weighed in recently, urging landlords to be extra cautious of applicants who have little or no rental history.
Nancy Cobb first learned of the FBI warning when the landlord of her Boston high-rise distributed notices about it. “To get this letter under your door was a little disconcerting,” says Cobb, a writer. Buildings throughout the country distributed a similar notice, which in some cases included the phone number for the local FBI office.
Some landlords are weighing harsher steps. Habitat Co., which manages more than 60 apartment buildings in the Midwest including high-rises in Chicago and Detroit, is considering inspecting both occupied and vacant apartments, says Nicole Kyros, marketing director.
The new security measures were prompted by the recent FBI announcement that al Qaeda operatives had talked about renting apartments in the U.S. and rigging them with explosives. The big national apartment associations followed up with recommendations to landlords on spotting potential terrorist activity and alerting and protecting tenants. One group, the National Multi Housing Council, suggested regular and thorough inspections of the apartment complexes, especially of vacant apartments, and more scrutiny of students.
The security alerts couldn’t come at a worse time for landlords, who are already struggling with vacancies. The weakened economy and strong home sales caused nationwide vacancy rates to surge to 5.7 percent in the first quarter, up from 3.2 percent a year earlier, according to research firm Reis Inc. In many markets, landlords have been offering a month or two of free rent and reducing security deposits.
While many landlords say their existing security is sufficient, those in big cities have been especially proactive. Bellmarc Cos., which manages 35 buildings in New York, has a new policy that bars from entering any non-residents who refuse to open their packages for inspection.
“These are the kinds of things we wouldn’t do under normal circumstances, but in a terror alert, we have a duty to,” says Neil Binder, a principal at Bellmarc.
Apartment owners and managers have also requested that tenant-screening companies expand the reach of their criminal background checks to include government-generated terrorist databases. Others are lobbying for that information to be made available for free to all landlords.
First American Registry, which conducts credit and criminal background checks, says it hopes to get access to an Office of Foreign Assets Control list that contains the name of known terrorists and drug kingpins, among others, and offer that as a screening service.
Some of the new security measures could run afoul of tenants’ rights, and landlords are more vulnerable than ever to such lawsuits. Civil libertarians and tenant lawyers say landlords have the right to check deliveries, require tenants to show ID, and probably even insist that they sign in when they enter the building.
While some tenant groups are worried about the invasiveness of the policies, others fear the opposite: that landlords aren’t doing enough to shore up security in this new age of terrorism.
