Background Criteria

Overview

This section contains multiple settings related to criminal history screening. This is the most legally complex area of tenant screening.

⚠️ Critical: These settings are based on the HUD Disparate Impact Memo. We strongly recommend consulting with an attorney before making criteria more strict than our defaults.

Understanding Lookback Periods

Each criminal record type has a lookback period - how far back in time we'll consider that type of offense.

Example: If felonies are set to 7 years, we only decline for felony convictions within the past 7 years. Older felonies are not considered.

HUD Guidance

Our default settings follow HUD's guidance on avoiding discriminatory screening:

• Individualized assessment: We don't auto-decline for all criminal history

• Nature and severity: We consider what the offense was

• Time elapsed: Older offenses weigh less than recent ones

• Relationship to tenancy: We consider relevance to being a tenant

State & Local Overlays

⚠️ Critical: Many jurisdictions have laws limiting criminal history screening:

Examples:

• California: Fair Chance Act limits lookback periods and prohibited offenses

• Colorado: Limits on eviction and criminal history screening

• Oregon: Strict limitations on criminal background screening

• Washington: Fair Chance Housing laws

What we do: Rentzap monitors regulatory regions for your properties. We'll automatically apply any mandatory rules based on property location.

What you see: Mandatory overlays appear in your criteria with a note: "This is a mandatory regional rule" and cannot be edited.

Recommendation: When creating criteria, set your baseline conservatively (following HUD guidance). Let our system handle jurisdictional requirements automatically.