Enquiring minds wanted to know. I ran a public record search on her. She was evicted four times in the past two years and had seven, yes seven, convictions for prostitution including three at the mailman's house. We helped him do the eviction. She knew the system and stalled it by applying for emergency assistance through W2.

When it was over six months lost rent and thousands in property damage, including that done during a police raid while the eviction was on hold. So saving $20 by not checking the tenant cost the owner around five thousand dollars.

No owner wants to have Drug Dealers or users in their properties. They are hard on the buildings, drive out good tenants, cause the neighbors to complain and they don't pay rent. Moving them instead of jailing them is akin to releasing a herd of locust on our housing stock and neighborhoods. Both locust and drug criminals leave a path of destruction in their wake.

Likewise no owner wants to have a bunch of freeloading, nonpaying professional deadbeats beating them out of their rent while enjoying the use of water heat... well you know the issue.

You need a solid screening process to keep the bad guys and gals out of your place to avoid the associated problems. One that works is:

• Require all applicants have a picture ID, otherwise you don't really know who is standing in front of you.
• Have all applicants provide a utility bill or piece of mail addressed to them. This is the quickest way to find if they really live where they say they do. Don't forget to look at the date; it could be an old bill from a long ago address
• Use Tenant Screening Services or some other credit reporting agency to obtain a credit report. More than the credit information you will want to look at the header, which provides addresses and names they have used. Then check with those property owners as well because the current owner, especially if they are smaller, may lie to you just to get rid of their headaches.
• Have Accurate Screening Services or another tenant screening service verify the actual ownership of the properties they live at and talk to that owner. You can do all this yourself but there is a point of diminishing returns.
• Get in you car and stop by their current home. It is amazing how many times everything else has checked out, only to find they really don't live where they say they do, or there are twenty gang members in the front yard, or you are greeted by a 150 pound pit bull or they are sloppy or no one at the property even knows who they are. Once we even found the address was a vacant lot.
• A month after they move in stop by and check who is really living there. The worst drug problem we ever had the tenant checked out perfect. He never moved in and later admitted to the police that he took $300 from the drug dealer in exchange for renting the apartment for them.