Political Quotes

“This amendment is very limited and straightforward to deal with a problem that we've started getting a lot of calls from Realtors in our district, as I'm sure many of my colleagues across the country are receiving, as well as property owners who own apartment units and other types of housing that are rented out. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has recently come out with a rule called the ``disparity impact rule,'' and it's not a final rule that has been issued yet. We're just trying to make a narrow clarification that would allow property owners to be able to check and make sure that if somebody has a criminal conviction that that person could be prevented from moving into an apartment complex, for example, where you've got single mothers with young children. Every single day in this country, property owners use background checks to check on criminal records of people that are applying for housing. This has nothing to do with violations of the Fair Housing Act. It's just a basic common practice that property owners use every day to make sure that somebody that's looking to move into housing doesn't have a criminal record. Some property owners can look at that, and some property owners can choose not to be concerned about that. But many millions of property owners across the country do look at whether or not somebody has got a criminal conviction in determining whether or not they will rent them housing.…”