| Employment Screening and background
investigation services are one of the largest growing
segments of the economy. Every business today has an obligation
to itself, its customers, its current employees and general
public to know who works for them.
ABI has created a comprehensive
program to ensure that you have everything you need
to be successful.
Our mission is to allow companies
of all sizes and their Human Resources,
Risk management or loss prevention staff to easily and
efficiently receive the necessary information to make
an informed decision. No employers want to base a having
decision on miss information so the applicant has every
to make the employers aware that a mistake was made.
You have to make sure you have a screening that accurate
and that the information you have is correct.
Background checks are about protection and making and
informed business decision whether for your company
as your property. If an individual is dishonest at their
Last job, that's a pretty good indication of what they'll
be like at your company.
Avoiding the pitfalls of a
bad hiring
decision is virtually impossible without readily available
information. Criminal background checks, drug screening
and employment verification are all essential tools
for serious human research professionals.
Rental application. The most common components of tenant
screenings are credit report address history, social
security verification, criminal checks landlord verification,
employment and income verification.
The searching process
For landlords, searching tenants
is a delicate process that involves balancing federal,
state and local fair housing lows. Which limit what
a landlord man do and say in the tenant selection process,
with legitimate business reasons for rejecting tenant
applicants here are the important pants to bear in mind
:
1. Landlords are legally
free to choose among prospective tenants as long as their
decisions are based on legitimate business criteria.
Rental applicants with bad credit
histories, insufficient income to pay the rent or risky
rental histories, such as damaging
property or consistently paying rent late, are a bad business
risk and may be rejected.
2. Fair housing laws
specify clearly illegal reasons for landlords to refuse
to rent to
you. Federal law prohibits
discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national
origin,
sex, familial status and disability (including recovering
alcoholics and people with a past
drug addiction). New York State law adds marital status
and age to the list of protected
categories. And New York City law adds three more categories
to the list: sexual
orientation, lawful occupation and citizenship status.
We review the details of these laws in Chapter 11.
3. Every member of
the landlord's team who handles your rental application
must
follow fair housing laws.
This includes owners, landlords, managers, building
superintendents and real estate agents, and all of their
employees.
4. Landlords are legally
free to choose among prospective tenants as long as their
decisions are based on valid and objective business criteria,
such as:
• a good credit
history
• sufficient income to pay the rent
• ability to meet non discriminatory terms of the
tenancy, such as no pets (see "A
Disabled Tenant's Right to Keep a Service Pet,"
below) o no prior bankruptcies, money judgments or eviction
warrants o no criminal record, with the exception of
convictions for past drug use (see "How Past Arrests
and Convictions May Affect Your Application," below)
o two positive references from previous landlords, and
o a signed waiver giving your permission to current
and past employers to talk to your prospective landlord.
E3 Landlords can't
limit your right to share your unit with roommates and
immediate family members, unless the total number of
people living in the rental unit violates local ordinances
on overcrowding. Chapter
7 explains your apartment sharing rights.
5. Landlords must
use the same criteria to evaluate every rental applicant.
Landlords must treat
all applicants more or less equally -- for example,
a landlord who arbitrarily sets tougher standards for
renting to a member of a racial minority or other protected
group is violating federal laws.
A Disabled Tenant's Right
to Keep a Service Pet
Landlords may legally refuse to
rent to people with pets and may restrict the types or
size of pets accepted. The landlord may also, strictly
speaking, let some tenants keep a pet and say no to others
- because pet owners, unlike members of a religion or
race, are not as a group protected by housing discrimination
laws.
However, landlords may not prohibit a "service animal"
who assists a sight-impaired, deaf or physically or mentally
disabled person. (42 U.S.C. § 3604(f) (3)(B); Exec.
L. § 296(18)(2); NYC Admin. Code § 8-102(18).)
Disabled tenants may be asked by the landlord to submit
proof (in the form of a doctor's note, for instance) that
the service animal is necessary to enable that person
to live safely and comfortably in the apartment or home.
See Chapter 11, Section A4, for more on the subject.
How Past Arrests and Convictions May Affect Your Application
Understandably, some landlords now check applicants' criminal
history as part of the tenant screening process. Two of
the big three credit agencies, Trans Union and Equifax,
will do criminal history searches. New York law prohibits
credit reporting agencies from disclosing an applicant's
arrest record, unless the arrest resulted in a criminal
conviction or in criminal charges that are still pending.
(GBL § 380-j (a)(l).)
If you've been convicted for criminal offenses, a landlord
may, with one exception, be entitled to reject you on
that basis. The exception involves convictions for past
drug use: As explained in Chapter 11, Section A4, past
drug addiction is considered a disability, and a landlord
may not refuse to rent to someone on that basis - even
if the addiction resulted in a conviction. People with
convictions for the sale or manufacture of drugs, or current
drug users, however, are not protected and may be rejected.
New York criminal proceedings that get dismissed or result
in an acquittal are "sealed" and aren't available
to the public. A landlord may not obtain sealed criminal
records. (CPL § 160.50.) Conviction records aren't
sealed and are available to the public. A few other states,
however, permit criminal conviction records to be sealed
if certain requirements are met. If you have an out-of-state
criminal record, you may want to see if you qualify for
having those records sealed. For more information, contact
the justice department for the state in which the criminal
proceeding was adjudicated.
A landlord may also use "Megan's Law" to check
whether an applicant is listed on New York's database
of registered sex offenders. Named after a young girl
who was killed by a convicted child molester who lived
in her New Jersey neighborhood, this 1996 federal crime
prevention law charged the FBI with keeping a nationwide
database of persons convicted of sexual offenses against
minors and violent offenses against anyone. (42 U.S.C.
§§ 14073 and following.) New York's version
of Megan's Law is officially known as the New York State
Sex Offender Registration Act (Correction L. § 168).
To determine if a named individual is listed in the state
sex offender registry, landlords and other members of
the public can call 900-288-3838 weekdays, between 8:00
a.m. and 5:00 p.m. (There's a $5 fee that appears on the
caller's phone bill.) For more information, or to correct
information about you that might appear on the database,
call the State Division of Criminal Justice Services at
518-457-7301, write them at 4 Tower Place, Albany, NY
12203-3764, or visit the DCJS website at www.criminaljustice.state.ny.us/nsor/index.htm.
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