Had another one for the rooming house today. Sounded real good on the phone. This is a 63 year old female on disability and with a PT job. Checked her on PA Courts and she's got an active case with charges for simple assault, aggravated assault and harassment. The aggravated assault charge appear to involve a gun. She had to spend a day in jail and bail was set at 30,000. To me that bail level indicates the seriousness of the charges. HUD takes a dim view of denying people who have simply been charged and not convicted. Rather than straight up decline her, I told her to get back to me after final disposition of the charges. Obviously, that doesn't help her now. She has a clean record otherwise. She's responded as follows:

"There not even true. Abusive controlling boyfriend trying to steal house from me. Didn't even have formal charges yet. But ok. Innocent before proven guilty is the law"

She's right and this lines up with HUD's thoughts on this as well. As she has no other criminal history, she'll probably wind up in ARD. How would you handle?

I have to deal with this sometimes, too. I think your approach is good. Postponed pending the outcome, not "denied". Not sure how a judge would view it-it's really the same as denied for all practical purposes, and I wouldn't want to be the test case, but what else do we have?

I routinely do credit checks for roomer applicants, to verify info on app & get any missing addresses/info they conveniently forgot to include. So I may find something there to DQ - as NE suggests. But maybe not, since the requirements for a roomer do not include good credit.

If you don't normally pull credit, or hold those things against a roomer applicant, then you're in trouble if you do it here.

Here, we also cannot deny someone their legal right to own a gun.

It's like walking on hot coals. Perhaps at least adding something about this situation to the written criteria is a good idea, but mostly just hope nobody tries to get a lawyer to prove their "rights" to be in your (my/our) place.

I Hope she goes away and doesn't make it an issue!

DJ, so you can’t deny if they legally own a gun and many wouldn’t say but I didn’t know if a rooming house would be different because of the shared living space. I wondered about people leaving their doors unlocked while cooking, showering and didn’t know if that was a potential issue with someone entering a room and taking it or if tempers flared more in rooming houses. Do you have different lease clause restrictions for the rooming house vs apartment?

Just because she has been charged with a crime,...you want to assume she is guilty. Maybe she is but then again, maybe she is just a victim of circumstance.

Abusive boyfriend trying to steal her house? Was she owning a house? What happened to the house?

GKARL,

Your applicant is a 63 year old female with a past clean record,... that speaks volumes to me. I would rent to her based on that aspect alone.

It seems to me you can't see the Forrest because of all of the Trees.

I would not rent to her in a boarding house situation. Set aside her ability to afford: SFR - yes, Apartment - maybe, Boarding house - NO.

I too would wait, when someone steals a house chances are a handgun will not get it returned - ask her where did they take the house?

Plus she has an abusive boyfriend. I'm sure your other tenants would love seeing boyfriend/girlfriend fights every night.

JKJ,

All I am saying is, in our justice system, people are (or should be) presumed innocent until proven guilty. Since her record has been clean for 63 years, why not give her the benefit of the doubt?

Roy, that presumption relates to depriving people of their liberty by throwing them in prison.

Perhaps innocent, however from a liability perspective that you could also be facing if another mishap occurs of a violent nature.....the judge will be asking you - Did you know of or should have know of a history of violence.