Poor screening often results in lost rents, legal & court costs and costly damages.Screening of applicants includes the following:Full credit/eviction/criminal checks are done, instead of score-driven reportsVerification of rental history includes validation of actual property owner to avoid fraudVerification of stability of income & employment via YTD paystubs & W-2(s) (analyzed to confirm not fakes)Income is calculated 3 ways to spot stability anomalies: pay period, YTD average and YTD + W-2 average.Debt-to-income analysis (more accurate than traditional 3x rent requirement)Bank statement to see if NSF issues, if deposits support income, prove MoveIn Funds, also analyzed for unusual transactions.Pet screeningHolding Fee required from approved applicants to make sure they are serious, before a property is marked pending.

In Hyde Park and Oakley, you are probably closer to a 0.75% rule, but you will have your choice of tenants with high incomes, savings, no criminal background. 

Turned out the guy had a long criminal history and had drug issues.

Check out their track record, their team, their underwriting, the history, their plan, have someone else look over, ask the hard questions, do a criminal background check.

to me it was more like who risk criminal over 40k ? 

New York has a $20 dollar cap on the application fee but most if not all charge more than this just for the credit check and more if you want a criminal or eviction check.

For nurses that means they have had criminal background checks so I don't need to run them.

They also mention criminal action, but it seems logical that would be an escalation.

.* Criminal History.

You can reject a Section 8 applicant for the same reasons you reject other applicants: credit score, Landlord reference (or lack thereof), criminal history, etc.