I'm not rewarding bad behavior.

Of course when you do this you increase the paper trail showing fraud.Sorry to be so blunt, but this kind of crappy unethical behavior is what starts to kill a good market - it's just greed.So run don't walk from this guy.  

We're at the point where after ten years of renting out grade C apartments in a low rent town,  we know more about eviction law in our state than most lawyers do.The corollary is to screen well, but if you're dealing with low end rentals, anyone willing to live there will have bad credit, so what you're really screening for is past evictions, lawsuits, nuisance suits by the tenant, court judgements, and criminal behavior. 

Yet, credit score is untouched despite their quirky behaviors. 

When targeting use the demographics and behaviors of your target audience (i.e. likely to move, divorced, homeowner, etc...).

Assuming the monthly income is not sufficient on its own, their savings or other assets should offset the deficiency. 5 or 10K is NOT adequate, but depending on the rent, 50K might be; any anything north of 100K should provide all the security you need.You still do a credit check to make sure they are not maxing out credit cards to live on and see what their historical performance has been; and background check to make sure they don't have current bad behavior.

Give you the wherewithal to pursue and achieve your long-term goalsMany investors start off "too hot", and they either overdevelop their first property or they spend their money too fast: either of these behaviors will stop you dead in your tracks, and you probably won't even be able to achieve your short-term goals - and you certainly won't have the resources to pursue your long-term goals.

Look for drug references and other nefarious behavior 

This is just a factor of the prices not allowing the same type of behavior that were the bad part of past environment.

That mentality is baked into the culture in both Flint and Detroit in so many places it's not funny.So, if your population can't read, has no idea what professional behavior looks like, and has a cultural aversion to working harder than the other guy (lest you take his job) you aren't left with much.