Another Attack on the Lowest Income

A Website Dedicated to Bad Tenants

There was a story this week on WEWS “newschannel5” about a national registry of bad tenants. An aside: why is Channel 5 called “news channel” when they don’t even have the most local news of the four local channels in Cleveland? Anyway, this was surprisingly a good local news story about this new front in the war between rich and poor, which will certainly keep people homeless for a longer period of time. This is a horrible trend, and I hope that activists sue the pants off the creators of this site in order to shut it down. In the alternative, there must be some industrious young tenants with some time to create a website of bad landlords.

It sounds like a good idea on its face--a place where landlords can prevent a “Pacific Heights” type tenant from reeking havoc around the community. Some tenants may even be thankful that this site may weed out a few bad neighbors. We understand landlords trying to protect themselves against financial ruin, but this is the wrong approach. There is no ability to appeal a listing on this website. There is no verification that the information is accurate. For landlords there are background checks that can be done that provide more objective information. There is a fee to view the list of bad tenants, but anyone can enter the name, social security or date of birth for bad tenants. Didn’t those credit score websites get in trouble for listing credit scores without having the ability for the owner of those scores to correct inaccurate data? Is it legal to have a person’s social security number listed and so readily available on a website? All it takes is a small fee, and you could have access to hundreds of social security numbers to select a new identity. These tenants never gave permission for the landlord to post their personal information on a public website. There must be some industrious young lawyers out there who would want to challenge the legality of this website or some lawmaker who wants to standup for the little guy.

What happened to forgiveness? How long do these stay up? Is it fair to list a problem tenant from 10 years ago? Since no one screens these can others list untrustworthy people? I mean if I were a landlord I would never rent to former Senator Phil Gramm or Vice President Cheney. I would never allow Tom Delay or former Ohio Attorney General Mark Dann to bring his partying lifestyle to my apartment building. There are many public officials who routinely lie, and may not be the most upstanding tenants. I can think of hundreds of people that I would be worried every month that they may not be good for the rent. Anybody got the social security number and date of birth for former HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson?

Brian
Posts by Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless staff and Board.