Are there certain crimes that are un negotiable no matter how long the time has passed between the event?

Have you had anyone that had an assault or larceny charge years ago and you took a chance on them?

Have someone looking for a place to live and back in 2015 he assaulted two people. It seemed like a pretty bad assault.

I know people change, however I’m not willing to take a chance on him living with others in an apartment.

Just wondered what your experiences have been like in this type of situation.

"Are there certain crimes that are un negotiable no matter how long the time has passed between the event?"

Birth.

All joking aside, the opposite, death (murder).

Assault family violence is one that's never been good when I give someone a chance, regardless of the passage of time or the presence of family support.

I've never given an arsonist a chance to find out whether they matured, but even with my optimism, I highly doubted they had. :)

I gave organized crime an opportunity once as a favor to someone. It did not end well. He ended up stealing from his mom, even though he was a 40-something yo man by that point.

Those are the first three that come to mind. There's a high chance you have to be wired in a certain way to get in those boxes, vs someone who commits a crime out of weakness. But even when I make excuses for someone being weak and desperate, even if their criminal record is clear, they often haven't grown a moral backbone in the interim, if that makes sense?

I do pay special attention to crimes that involve violence. I have to ask myself, to what extent am I place myself with additional liability.

The other thing I look for is what is the pattern of breaking laws during that 16 years that they have been out. Are they squeaky clean or is there a continued pattern of pushing and breaking rules. Believe it or not, I generally like the HUD guidance approach when considering criminal background checks.

Tough decision for sure. I would need more info as well.

Was the assault because he was jumped and defended himself, yet lost on court? Did he just lose control and start bashing a couple people? Was it chemically induced? Was it a case that was plead down to assault?

I do not typically accept anyone with violence or hard drug cases, whether they were convicted or not.

Same holds with evictions tho. Some LLs in this area file eviction just because they want the place back for other reasons. If there is not a big damages case tied to it I will listen to the reason and then pass judgement.

One more thing to consider:

"EVERYTHING" gets pled down to a lower charge, to keep the "justice" system moving more quickly.

So a conviction of assault may have really been attempted murder or at least aggravated assault, etc.

My pre-screen question is "anything violent or drug-related?"

Years before it was easily found on the internet I had a guy apply that had a sex charge against him.

He told me up front about it and said it was a 16 year old girl pretending to be 18 years old.

Whatever the charge was, you can not accept the tenant's version of what happened, because they will have a version where it was not their fault, and not that bad. But then the court system will have a much different version.

First of all, assault means THREATENING to hurt someone. If you actually DO hurt them, it's battery.

I just rented to a young man with a charge of assault. His sister stole some money from him, he threatened her, she called the cops. He didn't spend any time in jail, which told me that the judge (who had a lot more details than I could find online) didn't think it was worth jail time. He's been a great tenant so far.

I rent to people with colorful backgrounds on a regular basis. Automatic disqualifiers: manufacturing, meth/cocaine, murder, arson.

I have not had great success renting to people with significant enough mental health issues that they have a case manager. (Note that I did NOT say it's an automatic DQ, because that would be discrimination based on a disability.)