Religious Organization as a Guarantor for bad credit tenant

[Rebecca Rogers]

We just bought a 3-family and have one unit left to rent out (owner occupied).  We have an applicant who we generally liked, a nice woman with a disabled daughter who is in boarding school 9 months out of the year.  The problem is that she says she has bad credit due to a divorce (457). She has many late payments on her current car. Other accounts have some late payments but mostly current.  

We hadn't rejected her yet and she came to us saying her religious organization is going to be the leasee, effectively her guarantor and will be paying us directly.  How do we go about looking into this and making sure we get paid from the organization?  Are there background/credit/income checks for organizations; specifically religious ones?  We have other applicants (none yet with stellar credit) but this seems like it might be a good way to go.  

Also please feel free to refer me to any prior posts about this, thank you!

[Nathan Gesner]

1. Nobody's credit drops to 457 just because of a divorce. I got a divorce many moons ago and my credit hardly dropped at all. Her score probably started at 462 and then dropped to 457! Seriously, she's got bad credit due to a long history or bad choices, not just divorce. Let's also remember that just because someone is divorced doesn't mean they are a victim. Maybe she's divorced because she tried to kill her husband or slept with half his coworkers.

2. Churches are not very good at screening people. They have soft hearts and little or no experience. They give money to people with their hands out because they truly want to help but it's just as likely to enable the individual. I have churches call me every month asking about whether they should help a tenant with rent. I estimate about 90% of the people they help end up back in the hole and evicted shortly thereafter. He who is faithful with little...