There's been a lot of talk about background checks lately. The topic tends to come up every time people are scared by recent violence and want some way of ensuring that Bad Things continue to happen only in far away places.
Over the course of my real estate career I had to run lots and lots of background checks on renters. I saw the background check output from 20-30 different tenant screening companies. They ranged in thoroughness from just a yes-no decision to 60 pages of detailed, computerized data. Only a handful of them provided a real, accurate picture of the tenants. The process that RentConfident uses to check on landlords in Chicago was designed in part as a response to the problems I found with modern tenant screening methods.
Civilian rental screening is far removed from the intensive processes used to monitor emigrés who are following legal entry channels. However, there are many others who get into the country through other means, both legal (student and worker visas) and not. It has been repeatedly proven by comparing prison populations and census data that foreign born residents of the US commit far fewer serious crimes than their US-born counterparts. Given the uneven treatment of immigrants and the high number of domestic criminals, those who are concerned about screening would do well to focus not only on the treatment of newcomers but also the vetting processes that are used to restrict who has access to our homes and offices on a daily basis.
Fortunately, landlords have options to screen their renters. Many landlords will even use their "thorough screening" of renters as an advertising hook, implying that their buildings are safer than the rest. This, my friends, is a load of baloney.
Continue reading A Screen is Only as Strong as its Largest Hole.
