Do You Have a Screening Lawsuit Pending?

If you are not using a screening company that is in compliance with all the rules and regulations specific to your region, you may be sued. Where exactly does the liability fall when the screening company you use still releases banned information to you, do you know? Do you really want to be at risk? 

The City of Seattle became the first city in the nation to pass legislation banning the use of criminal arrest and conviction records when considering an applicant for rental housing, known as the Fair Chance Housing Ordinance. Seattle housing providers must now adjust their tenant screening criteria and practices to comply with the ordinance. Tenant screening criteria, required to be included in all advertisements for rental vacancies, cannot include any policy or practice that automatically or categorically excludes all individuals with any arrest record, conviction record, or criminal history.

The only criminal convictions still allowed to be considered as a reason for denial are sexual offense convictions which occurred when the perpetrator was an adult, and which require that individual to register as a sex offender for life on a local, state, or national registry. 

While the city is moving forward with the implementation of the Fair Chance Housing ordinance, RHAWA has filed a petition with the United States Supreme Court asking for them to review a ruling from the Ninth Circuit court related to the ordinance’s constitutionality.  At issue is does Seattle’s restrictions on private owners’ right to exclude potentially dangerous tenants from their property violate the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process.  Timelines for consideration of such a review are always uncertain.  

With this pending review, RHAWA will not be changing any of our forms or guidance regarding Seattle’s Fair Chance Housing ordinance because the case is still in progress and the law has not yet actually changed. The city declining to enforce one of its laws does not mean the law is repealed. It is still the law and there remains a risk of an individual’s “private right of action.”  RHAWA can’t and won’t provide a process inconsistent with the law, that puts its members in potential legal jeopardy.

In the meantime, is your screening company complying with the local ordinance and withholding the criminal records? If not, you are at risk of being sued.

Seattle’s First in Time ordinance is in effect. As its title makes clear, the law requires housing providers to screen and make offers of tenancy to the first qualified applicant, based on the order completed applications are received. 

In general, the aim of the legislation is to prevent housing providers from cross-shopping applicants and picking the best qualified from a pool of renters which could include multiple applicants who meet the stated rental criteria. Does your screening company track the order in which applications are received down to the minute? Are they charging multiple applicants at once rather than one at a time? Are they offering refunds for those applicants whose applications were never processed? If you answered “no” to any of these questions, you may be at risk of a lawsuit. 

RHAWA is your one-stop shop for screening. RHAWA has a full-service screening department that is here to serve you as the housing provider while ensuring you are receiving accurate up-to-date information on all your potential residents. 

RHAWA also goes the extra mile in several areas: we offer rental and employment verifications – where we contact the applicants’ current housing providers and employers to see what their rental history/employment status is. RHAWA takes the pressure off of you, the housing provider, by doing the legwork. Although there are some verifications that RHAWA cannot complete (US military, or companies who use The Work Number), most are completed within 2-3 business days of being requested. The questions that RHAWA asks about their rental history are more objective and less subjective, so there is little “personal bias” in the results. RHAWA does not verify rental history with family members, due to the inherent bias that they have. In terms of employment verifications, while the questions we ask are fairly basic, they do provide confirmation of a consistent ability to pay rent.

RHAWA’s screening department is staffed by screening experts, all very knowledgeable and helpful when it comes to interpreting information contained in our reports. While we cannot give you an opinion on whether you should rent to a specific applicant, we can help you interpret the information to help you make your rental decision. During the summer months (your busiest season and ours) reports generally take 2-3 hours, but with the extensive checking and double-checking that RHAWA does, they can take up to 24 hours to complete. During the winter months, however, that turnaround time decreases significantly, with our average being 1.5 hours. 

Let RHAWA meet all your screening needs. 

Formal legal advice and review is recommended prior to selection and use of this information. RHAWA does not represent your selection or execution of this information as appropriate for your specific circumstance. The material contained and represented herein, although obtained from reliable sources, is not considered legal advice or to be used as a substitution for legal counsel.