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Should a landlord be allowed to turn away a tenant with a criminal conviction?

Tenant rights and Seattle鈥檚 homelessness crisis are at the heart of the debate over fair chance housing. At opposite ends are Nick Straley, a Columbia Legal Services attorney, and Sean Martin, legal counsel for the Rental Housing Association of Washington.

RELATED: Finding creative solutions to Tacoma鈥檚 homeless crisis

Both men joined Seattle鈥檚 Morning News on 成人X站 Radio for a debate on fair chance housing 鈥� and their conversation illustrates just how complicated the issue is.

What is fair chance housing?

Fair chance housing would limit a landlord鈥檚 ability to look into a rental applicant鈥檚 criminal history. A new law might ensure these records be limited to two years prior to the application date. ( criminal background checks should be altogether banned when it comes to applying for housing.)

Currently, the Fair Housing Act

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray announced a fair chance housing policy for the city in June. prohibits rental advertisements from having “blanket exclusions of criminal history.” It also prohibits landlords from asking about any convictions older than two years, arrests that did not lead to a conviction, convictions that have been vacated, and juvenile records.

How can it help?

Straley, a supporter of the bill, says it can help address issues of homelessness and mass incarceration and increase public safety.

“About 30 percent of people in King County have a criminal record,” said Straley. “It is a tremendous obstacle to getting employed and getting housed. And one of the things that I think we can all agree on is that we鈥檇 like to increase public safety.

“The reality is that getting people housed makes us safer because crime rates go down. Empirical evidence is absolutely rock-solid on that point. The more people housed, the safer we are. So, one of the things that should be done is to remove criminal records as a barrier to housing. There鈥檚 no proof that it creates any safer tenancies. And it will address one of the serious issues that the city of Seattle is confronting right now in homelessness. Between 60 to 70 percent of people on the streets have a criminal record. It鈥檚 incredibly difficult to get people off the streets with that record because it鈥檚 impediment to finding housing.鈥�

Straley has a point — incarceration is a big issue for Americans on both sides of the aisle. The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and over the past 30 years to 2.3 million people. The war on drugs was a major contributor to that growth, which has resulted in a number of racial inequities: Black people are 10 times more likely than whites to be arrested for drug crimes, according to The Huffington Post, and nearly of the people incarcerated for drug offenses are black (even though both white and black people are at the same rate). Black people are also more and are more likely to compared to whites with the same criminal history.

This is an important consideration when it comes to fair chance housing: if criminal convictions disproportionately affect people of color, then the use of criminal histories to determine tenancy is more likely to deny housing to people of color.

According to Straley, a criminal history rarely has bearing on someone’s ability to be a good renter.

鈥淭here is no empirical evidence that it makes anybody safer,” he said. “The research demonstrates, when all other factors are taken off the table, people with criminal records and people without criminal records do about equally well in housing.鈥�

If criminal records were taken off the table, rental home owners would still be able to check credit scores, seek past landlord references and require income verification.

The argument for landlords

Sean Martin, Director of External Affairs for the Rental Housing Association of Washington, believes there’s a group that has not been heard: landlords.

Martin agrees that mass incarceration and homelessness are issues in Seattle.

“I don鈥檛 want a misconception to be out there that landlords are just ignoring the problem or kind of have our heads in the sand,” said Martin. “But we want the solution to be a partnership with the city…

“Landlords didn鈥檛 create that problem. Let鈥檚 find ways that we can work with landlords to get people housed. And we have some ideas and there are some programs out there that work, but they鈥檙e not utilized, they鈥檙e not supported enough.”

Martin notes that there’s a serious financial risk involved for rental housing owners.

“Nick (Straley), for all the advocacy work that he does and he鈥檚 very passionate about it, and for the council members that are bringing this issue forward, none of them to my knowledge are rental housing owners and they don鈥檛 have a huge pile of money involved, where for our members or the small, individual folks who own one or two units, this is a retirement asset. And so there is a great deal of concern when it comes to 鈥榯his is my nest egg, and I want to protect it’.鈥�

To Martin’s point, there are existing federal guidelines for landlords, including the ability to have eviction civil records and credit checks (in addition to criminal records). Further, landlords must have a 鈥渂usiness case鈥� to deny someone tenancy. To mitigate the risk of losing the home, Martin says some landlords like to rely on criminal records checks. After all, property that houses a criminal activity (like a meth lab) can be legally seized, even if the owner wasn’t living there or responsible.

“There seems to be this thought… that rental housing a public commodity,” said Martin. “It’s not a public space.”

Listen to the full debate, here, as Martin suggests alternatives that don’t place a burden on landlords and both Martin and Straley look toward the next step in the fair chance housing process.