Tenant Watch - Failure to Pay Rent Archives

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ALOC has decided to reactivate the Tenant Watch program with the assistance of some of its members. Utilizing more modern techniques and providing much more detail, we believe we can provide a more meaningful list of information.

As some of you may remember, many years ago a monthly list of tenants who had been taken to Allegany County District Court for Failure to Pay Rent Complaints was compiled and circulated for a fee to subscribers. This list provided no details as to amounts due, court dates, disposition, rental unit locations and Landlord information. While having a list of names was a big help, a number of problems crept into the concept making it less than desirable. For instance the Court records do not provide any way to distinguish between two (2) Bill Smiths or Joe Johnsons as they contain no other means of identifying the tenant through date of birth, Social Security numbers or any other means. It also did not indicate the disposition of the case which could lead the Landlord to believe that all Tenants listed were indeed delinquent in paying their rent when that may not have been the case.

This new information will be offered in a database format accessible 24/7 through the Internet and no printed formats are planned. This will allow us to keep costs low avoiding mailing, paper and handling costs.

A lot of the information not listed in the original paper version will be included in the new electronic format and we believe this will allow for more intelligent decisions when choosing Tenants. We will also have a 24/7 plan for obtaining the information from live operators so that non-Internet equipped Landlords can still access this important information.

The Tenant Watch will be updated approximately every 30 days on or around the middle of each month covering records submitted the previous month. All information entered into the database is obtained from Public Records and as such is not subject to any privacy regulations. Should there be any errors it may be due to the inaccuracies or errors introduced by the Landlord submitting the original complaint or by Court personnel handling the case. Any errors detected can be reported to us for correction and details will follows as to how this can be accomplished.

This new Tenant Watch begins with cases as far back as October 2008. As time goes on it will grow in size to include more cases as each month passes. Tenants with no activity for three (3) years will have their records deleted from the database.

When using this database a number of caveats need to be considered. For instance many Tenants have the same or similar names and as the District Court records contain no distinguishing marks we can only separate them by their rental address, time period and/or Landlord, which will be included within the Tenant Watch. Care must be taken to carefully examine these records when using them to accept or reject a prospective Tenant. In some cases a Failure to Pay Rent Complaint may be dismissed because the Tenant paid the rent prior to Court or the Complaint may be filed to get the Tenant assistance from Social Services and it is possible that a Landlord could take a Tenant to Court when indeed there may be no rent due or they may be an honest dispute.

This service will be made available to ALOC members at a considerable discount while non-members can subscribe at a correspondingly higher rate.