# 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. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://help.rentzap.com/help-docs/guides/criteria-building-guide/background-criteria.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.