Re: Disabled Prospective Tenant? - Landlord Forum thread 332656

Re: Disabled Prospective Tenant? by Kwanto (Houston) on March 26, 2015 @11:15

there is a Texas law against discriminating against disabled persons
but nothing about disabled persons who HAVE NO INCOME

would you consider a disabled homeless person off the street that reeks of urine and has baked-bean teeth
??

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Re: Disabled Prospective Tenant? by Anonymous on March 26, 2015 @12:27	[ Reply ]

Kwanto, no of course not. Per the pre-screening, supposedly the dad is retired military and a retired school teacher. The son was injured on the job as an EMT. So they claim to have a current landlord reference and not that they are urine soaked homeless people with bad teeth. What you said is kind of crude don't you think?

Re: Disabled Prospective Tenant? by Anonymous on March 26, 2015 @12:51	[ Reply ]

She's pointing out to you the silliness of the thought that "a temporarily disabled person, like a permanently disabled person, with no income is somehow protected and I must rent to them" which is what you are contemplating. So I guess you now understand the absurdity of that notion?

Re: Disabled Prospective Tenant? by B on March 26, 2015 @12:30	[ Reply ]

"would you consider a disabled homeless person off the street that reeks of urine and has baked-bean teeth" How about a little professionalism when you respond?

Re: Disabled Prospective Tenant? by lynnd on March 26, 2015 @19:08	[ Reply ]

People do tend to have low-income and/or unemployment when they are disabled. Why should you even factor that into your question? If you didn't require all parties over the age of 18 to individually qualify, you would save yourself a lot of trouble (and potential for lawsuit later). Retired people often don't work but to preclude them from housing could imply ageism. Likewise, people with a traditional marriage/family structure may be doing so for a religious/cultural reason (wife "works" at home) or it could be that you will see cases of one person having a health/disability for which they have taken an early retirement or are self employed/low income while the other half of the couple is, in fact, capable by income and credit of making rent. By forcing all adults in a household to qualify individually — be they husband/wife or parent/child — what you are really doing is exercising the option to screen out stay-at-home wives/mothers, retired people and the disabled. All the aforementioned, it could be argued, are "high risk" even if they have good credit, a working spouse and no criminal history. By running checks even on people who will not be writing the rent checks — even though you have an eligible party in the household who CAN — the presence of a low income on the part of an adult occupant can conceivably serve as a proxy for weeding out a protected class. Now you may be thinking "Whoa, hold your horses" but ask yourself: Why is anything more than a criminal check so often run on non-rent paying parties in the first place? Because then you don't have to admit to the presence of an undesirable family/work/disability/religious status. You can just call it an income shortfall and move on for perfectly legal reasons! The problem with that approach, while legal, is that eventually the complaints will accumulate and the law will catch up (meaning more people joining the ranks of a protected class). If you don't want to encourage the inevitable, back off and let it stand if there is at least one person (primary) who can carry rent and for whom credit/criminal checks are not otherwise a factor. In this case, if the pet policy is stated — meaning no other residents have been granted exceptions — that's your best means to an end. The OP is over-stepping the bounds by letting any more than the pet issue even factor into the question.

Re: Disabled Prospective Tenant? by Anonymous on March 26, 2015 @22:51	[ Reply ]

This information is all from pre-screening. No application has been filed and no background checks have been performed. The tenant volunteered this information. But I can deny based on an F credit FICO score, next to no income, and 97 pounds of pets when my published pet standard is less than 1/3 that. No one, disabled or not, is a protected class when it comes to F credit, no income and too many pounds of pet. (The F score is a Transunion rating)