It wasn’t the best time to make a move, considering the housing market crunch with its spiking prices, low inventory, bidding wars, and seller-friendly closing conditions, but a job transition made it necessary.
After a three-month search, I found an apartment in a private development in Allentown, PA. It offered the amenities we wanted: a good neighborhood, a reasonable market rate, and proximity to high-performing schools.
I submitted the $75 application and information needed for the background check. As we started packing, I received notice that my application results were complete.
Denied.
It couldn’t be my credit rating, income or employment record. Perhaps it was a misunderstanding, a mix-up with my name. I was shocked when I scrolled down to discover the reason.
It was my criminal record.
Twenty-five years ago, when I was a teenager, I was arrested in Wisconsin for the distribution of drugs. I served five years and used that time to earn a degree and push myself in new directions.
I achieved enough success in my business ventures—ironically in low-income rental housing—to be featured on Good Morning America.
But as I stood over a cardboard box half filled with kitchen items, I realized my assumption that I had transcended my past was at the mercy of an algorithm and, in turn, to the lingering legacy of the War on Drugs.
While a “blemished” background has always imposed barriers on prospective renters, the widespread adoption of national tenant screening services over the past decade has made things more challenging.
Designed to synthesize credit, rental and criminal history, screening services summarily return a yes-or-no assessment that reduces a landlord’s rental risk while ensuring FHA compliance and speeding up approval times.
By relegating the rental decision to an algorithm, the context around a criminal conviction is irrelevant and is reduced to a binary decision.
Applicants with criminal backgrounds, like me, are forced in two directions: One, apply to multiple apartments, pay a rental fee each time, and sustain multiple inquiries into their credit, which negatively impacts their credit score.
Two, settle for rentals in areas less in demand because of school quality, safety, and/or a lack of amenities.
To counter this, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) developed a set of guidelines designed to protect people from criminal records-based barriers to housing.
Noting that Blacks and Latinos are arrested, convicted, and incarcerated at rates disproportionate to that of the general population, HUD required all landlords with criminal records-based barriers to housing to demonstrate such a practice is necessary to achieve a “substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest.”
Going further, the HUD guidelines declared, “A housing provider that imposes a blanket prohibition on any person with any conviction record – no matter when the conviction occurred, what the underlying conduct entailed, or what the convicted person has done since then – will be unable to meet this burden.”
This policy applies to all criminal convictions except for drug distribution crimes.
Unfortunately, this exception perpetuates the racial disparities HUD guidelines were meant to address. Only 68 percent of whites incarcerated for drug crimes are for distribution and manufacturing compared to 76 percent for blacks and 83 percent for Latinos.
This is due to a myriad of factors, including lack of better access to quality legal representation, district attorney discretion, and disparities in the way our legal system treats different types of drugs.
(Some offenses committed by individuals as juveniles can be expunged. However, I was sentenced to prison at the age of 18 Wisconsin, which is considered an adult in that state.)
If HUD continues to allow discretionary lifetime bans on housing for folks convicted of drug distribution charges, then the industry or government must require more transparent processes by landlords.
It is long past time to amend the Fair Housing Act (Section 807 (b) (4) which allows landlords to permanently ban renters convicted of the manufacturing and distribution of drugs.
Ordinances such as the “First in Time” rule in Seattle, where landlords must publish the criteria for renting a unit and rent to the first person who applies and qualifies, are promising initiatives to bring transparency to the opaque process faced by many.
While such ordinances face stiff legal resistance, they are necessary to ensure landlords are not intentionally, or otherwise, using discriminatory rental practices.
One of the great aspects of America is our belief in second chances. I have benefited from this ethos and have been able to build a better life for my family and work to help others achieve the same through professional and community endeavors.
But in the meantime, I need to find a place to live, which means finding a landlord willing to rent to me based on my income and credit history—not my conviction as a teenager.
Editor’s Note: A copy of the landlord’s letter, redacted to omit personal details, is attached here.
Additional Reading: Housing Assistance for Ex-Inmates Cuts Vicious Cycle of Recidivism, The Crime Report, March 3 2022.
Yusuf Dahl is co-founder of The Real Estate Lab in Allentown, PA and is executive director of innovation and entrepreneurship at Lafayette College.