Owner Update “Question of The Month”

Q: If more than one prospective tenant comes along with a TMHA Voucher, do I have to take the first one?

A. No, you as the landlord decide what tenant you will select, just as you would a non-voucher tenant.

This scenario gets back to the issue of tenant selection, and you the owner have the right to select the tenant of your choice. In fact, TMHA wants owners to screen program tenants. We know that out of say 10 Voucher holders who apply to you for a unit, some may not be good tenant material, so it is your right to use screening procedures that meet Fair Housing guidelines to choose an acceptable tenant.

TMHA does screen families for eligibility – which means that they are income eligible and that they have passed a felony records check for violent criminal and drug-related crimes. Under our procedures, we WILL give you information to help you with your tenancy screening, IF YOU ASK US FOR THE INFORMATION. We can tell you:

• The family’s current address,
   
• The name and address of the family’s current and prior landlord, if we know it,
   
• Factual information in the family’s file about tenancy history matters, or about drug related or violent criminal activity by family members (note that for new applicants, we may not have much tenancy information).

Typically, owners want to know if a prospective family is a “good tenant.” This can mean different things to different people, but usually owners want to know about:

• paying rent on time,
   
• keeping up the unit.

Checking with a prior landlord(s) is a well known procedure used in screening. However, we increasingly hear that prior landlords sometimes are reluctant to give information for fear of suit from the tenant. Sometimes, how one asks for the information is key. A prior landlord may not be willing to elaborate on whether they considered a tenant as good or bad, but may be willing to give a simple yes or no answer to the question, “Would you rent to this tenant again?” If the answer is No, that would be a clue to screen that tenant carefully.

Regarding payment of rent, remember that a tenant who has had trouble making rent consistently, but was otherwise satisfactory, could be a great tenant for you under our program with rental assistance. That Voucher we issue to them is money in the bank for you.

So suppose you do the screening and still get a “bad” TMHA tenant? Our advice is to evict them for legitimate violations of the lease. The right of the owner to evict a tenant does not change because the unit is being assisted on TMHA’s program. We do need to know that you have initiated an eviction action, and we need to follow what happens in the eviction, because if the tenant is evicted, the HAP Contract automatically ends when the eviction is final. Also, the tenant is automatically terminated as a result of a court eviction.

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