Renting to a felon

[Wade Sikkink]

A guy called me yesterday and asked about an apartment we have for rent. I gave him the info then he asked, "Do you rent to felons?"

I was a little surprised and responded, "What do you mean?"

He explained that he just got out of jail 2 months ago and he and his wife are looking to move closer to her work and were interested in the apartment. I asked what he was in jail for and he said selling pot. I asked if he was done with that and of course he said yes.

I personally feel that a person is not defined by one bad thing they have done in their past and people need second chances. However, zebra's don't change their stripes to quote the saying. It would probably be easy to reject them based on credit history, etc. He didn't call back and we have several other good applicants for the apartment, so I won't have to deal with it this time. I'm just interested in how other landlords feel about something like this in a tenants background.

[Bill S.]

Ok, I'll be an outlier here and the cold heartless SOB. No felonies ever. My brother got in trouble with the law. The things people do before they are caught is usually at least 10x of what they get caught for. It is extremely rare to get a felony for a one and done. I don't have time to sift through all those that are BSing me to take a chance on the one the will turn out good. I'll let all the other kind hearted landlords here on BP offer them a place to live or maybe they'll find a LL that doesn't ask. There are too many applicants that don't have a criminal history to consider those with a felony criminal past. Criminals know criminals. I don't need those kind of people in my life. Period. There was a thread previous about LL personal safety. This is the very first step, and most basic, in that process. Ignore it to your peril.