Opinion
“Tenant screening” harmful to Madison
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Also by Erik Paulson:
- Keep grad school restructuring talks open (October 29, 2009)
- A vision for more affordable homes (October 1, 2009)
- If the city allows it, fans will come (September 16, 2009)
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You know what really grinds my gears? People who say, “Madison landlords should do a better job of screening tenants,” when they really mean ” Madison landlords should do a better job of keeping out black people.” I don’t think everyone who calls for tighter screening by landlords is a racist, but clearly people are sensitive to the connotations attached to the idea of “screening” tenants. If you ever go to a public meeting where rental housing is discussed, you can almost always feel the awkward pause that precedes any mention of potential tenants, and the guilt of white privilege or some desire to stay politically correct forces the speaker to be careful in their choice of words. “Better screening” or “the right tenants” seem to be the safe picks.
These discussions are now happening in the neighborhoods right next to campus. For many years, an equilibrium has existed between the number of students and the available housing units immediately surrounding campus. Living downtown or near campus has just not been an option for non-students, particularly the poor. For one, only students tend to rent an apartment eight or nine months in advance of their move-in, and even if by some miracle non-students find an apartment downtown, the poor are usually priced out of it. In the past few years, this equilibrium has been upset by new high-rise apartment buildings practically on campus, catering almost exclusively to students. The increased housing choices have been good for students, and the fact that there are now so many vacant units have helped bring the older housing rental prices more in line with the rest of the city. However, the crumbling of this economic apartheid has meant demographics are starting to change in some parts of the city. Landlords and long-term residents are nervous about who will move into these areas as students begin to move out.
Of course, worries about who will move into a changing neighborhood are not new, and we are deluding ourselves if we don’t think racial factors continue to be part of those worries. This is especially true in Madison, where we have some absolutely stunning statistics to show how deep our problems are. From Dane County locking up 97 black drug offenders for every white offender to the crisis in University of Wisconsin Admissions that created a freshman class of African-American students that would barely fill two dorms floors, we need to do better.
My objection to “better screening” is that it doesn’t actually solve a real problem, it just pushes it somewhere else. The idea of better screening is simple: Tenants with troubles in their past are likely to cause trouble in the future, so landlords avoid renting to those tenants. If a neighborhood is more crime-ridden than others, insist the landlords do a better job of screening tenants and things will improve or at least not decline. There is an inherent flaw in this process, which should be obvious: it only works if there are places that don’t screen as well as everywhere else. Like a pyramid scheme with lives instead of money, people are passed from neighborhood to neighborhood as more landlords adopt the same screening. And invariably, it is the poor who ultimately get ripped off.
Madison deals with this flaw reactively. An area will have “low standards” and become crime-ridden and a disproportionate drain on resources. The city will come in, displace the residents, rebuild and rename the area. A few years later, the cycle repeats. As Broadway-Simpson became Lake Point, Allied Drive hit rock bottom. As Allied gets new developments and names, there remain concerns about what will happen to its current residents (while the new buildings are “hoity-toity” compared to what was there before, the ultimate irony is that the people Gene Parks stood up for will probably not live on the street named for him). Just this past week, the Wisconsin State Journal ran a story about the city’s plan for acquiring and rebuilding crime-infested buildings in the Burr Oaks Neighborhood, and sure enough, tighter screening is listed as a tool to use.
In the same article, one landlord said he didn’t know where his tenants would go, and that’s the question we need to start answering. “Better screening” platitudes need to be replaced with specifics. Why should one neighborhood accept troubled tenants but another should not? And why is that neighborhood usually black? For the people who don’t pass the screening, where do we expect them to go? I have to believe that most people are embarrassed by their answer, and that’s why they don’t go beyond “better screening.” Perhaps they are OK with allowing sad boroughs of last resort for people who can’t get in anywhere else. Or, maybe they imagine that people will live with family or friends, or just wind up on the street. Or perhaps they don’t really care and assume that people will move on to another city and take their troubles with them.
Erik Paulson (epaulson@unit1127.com) is a PhD student majoring in computer science.
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You just wrote an article that provided no solution and 99% of the student body will not understand. Congrats.
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Maybe we should force the banks to make house loans to non-traditional borrowers so they don’t have to rent?
Hah, tried that - didn’t work out too well so far.
Have to stick with forcing landlords to rent to deadbeats with poor credit records.
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Well, many of them can move back to Chicago.
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Eric,
You’re obviously not a landlord. “Better screening” is the difference between the successful and those who fail in property management. As you know, race/ethnicity/gender/sexual orientation/etc are already protected classes. If you have evidence of applicants being discriminated based on these factors you should report them. However, in the real world, we care more about whether the applicant can and will pay the rent and respect the property. Many landlords use a numerical formula system based on credit scores, debt, income, and criminal history. Proper screening is necessary both to protect the landlord’s investment and to protect the value of the other homes in the area. You couldn’t be further out of touch with reality.
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You know what grinds my gears? Copying a classic family guy quote and using it as your own
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“pay the rent and respect the property” ???
You greedy SOB! Think of the children! Wait until ACORN hears about you.
From each acording to their ability (that would be you), to each according to their need (that would be the homeless people with no money).
Maybe you can get some bailout money not lose everything?
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I can’t honestly believe I read this. You’re the type of person that just increases the tension in race relations. You know, just because black people may have a greater percentage of poverty in the population doesn’t mean that’s why tenant screening is trying to keep out black people. Did you ever think landlords want their monthly payment?! Not only would they turn away a tenant due to race because they kind of NEED them for their livelihood, but they also want to make sure that people with bad credit aren’t going to stiff them later on, driving up the cost for others.
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Enough with putting this issue on “black hands”, why do members of this staff feel that way?
What about Latinos, whites (many of them are poor) or Asians? Why is it always black people.
Yes there is segregation and discrimination in housing but only harping on a black people is nothing more than a half truth.
As a black person, I would love to see the Badger Herald actually let a African American who might have more experience writing about these kinds of issues.
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This is a really great article, Erik. Anyone who has ever attended a Madison community meeting knows about all those creative euphemisms many white people use to describe those feared black tenants - “Chicago people” being the most popular these days, in my estimation. Like you stated, this whole discussion is so obscured by euphemism and intentional miscommunication; people will almost never come out and say that they simply don’t want to live next to people of color (especially black people), nor that they could care less where they end up, just so long as it’s not next door. The end result is almost always the same: more slums, more hopelessness.
Kyle Szarzynski Student Tenant Union, Lead Organizer
IP hash: 63fb5159
Ah, youth and the idealism born of inexperience. I think Erik should work in the multi-housing industry (or any industry for that matter) for even a day before he pretends to know what he is talking about. I wonder if Erik did any research or interviewed anybody in the housing industry before writing this article. Or is this written from a purely “anyone who owns and rents property must be racist” point of view. Seriously, Erik? Doesn’t that make you a bigot? All the landlords I know would gladly rent to anyone (white, black, tan, yellow, brown, green, blue, purple, chartreuse, etc.) who had a proven track record of paying their bills on time (rent being considered a bill), being a respectful neighbor that cared for the rental property as if it were there own, and had a reliable source of income. Note: I said “income”, not job. I liked the comment alluding lowered credit screening or landlords to the current the banking crisis. It’s the same situation here Erik. It’s the exact same thing. One last thing; I found it ironic that a black person was offended by your article. That should really tell you something.
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What if I don’t like my terrible white neighbors, does that also mean I hate black people? Help, someone progressive please explain it to me!
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Wow. I don’t really even know how to respond, just that I had to say something. I believe this is pure naivety speaking. Tenant screening is done to keep out criminals, people who have terrible credit, and people who can’t afford to rent the place to begin with. It’s for the landlord’s protection.