Gregory Luce wrote:
The ordinance prohibits landlords from collecting numerous application fees for a single apartment, cashing them all and only using one or two to screen and find a tenant. To me, that's a sloppy if not fraudulent business practice that hurts tenants.
From the proposed ordinance:
d) If a rental applicant has paid an application fee for an available unit, the rental property owner may not collect another application fee for that unit unless the first applicant has been screened and rejected for the unit, or the first applicant has been offered the unit and declined to take it.
I grant that the collecting of numerous rental application fees for a single unit, cashing them all but only screening one or two rental applicants is harmful to the applicants who paid the application fee but never were screened.
Accepting this, I wonder why rental applicants then submit rental applications to landlords that engage in that practice?
Or, rather, what does the City know about these landlords that the rental applicants do not know? Does the City of Minneapolis have a special ability to peer into hidden dealings of landlords to determine if they are violating subsection d?
If not, will the City be sending police officers to dig through the landlords' records and bank statements to determine if they are collecting more fees than they are permitted?
If the City does have the special ability to peer into the activities of landlords, why is it not sharing that information with the rental applicants? With this information, rental applicants could avoid those landlords that are collecting extra screening fees.
Subsection D will not work because the City has no more ability to determine which landlords are collecting too many application fees than do the rental applicants.
Scott McGerik Hawthorne http://scott.mcgerik.com/
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