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  1. #1

    Default Sex Offender Living Upstairs

    My question involves landlord-tenant law in the State of: Ohio

    Hi, new to the forum. I made this post in a different forum and didn't get much help, so I'm going to copy/paste it here:

    Quick background on the topic. My roommate was bored at work and came across the site www.familywatchdog.us... when he came home later he showed it to me. You can type in your address and see just about all the registered sex offenders (or people who have made similar offenses) in your area. It also gives a description of the offense and description of what they look like and pic (if it's on file). Anyway, so he zooms in on our exact address and realizes that a registered sex offender is living upstairs from our apartment. Now, we don't live in some large apartment complex or anything... this is just a house broken down into 1 large apartment on the first floor (ours) and 2 smaller apartments upstairs. We're apt. A, and the offender is upstairs in apt. C. Suffice it to say we were pretty surprised/sickened/pissed to find out some rapist was living just feet away from us, and hand been all year without our knowledge. By the way, we go to Ohio State and live just off campus... and the offender is a 48 year old, single black man that has lived there for a couple years (not sure if any of that is relevant). The website also doesn't say when he committed this crime.

    This brings me to the point of the post. Should we have been notified by our landlord and/or authorities before we signed our lease that a sex offender would be living upstairs? I don't know the exact law on this issue, but I think we should be allowed to know information like that. It's also aggravating because there are 2 girls living upstairs, and I'm sure they don't know he's living just in the other room.

    Thoughts?

  2. #2

    Default Re: Sex Offender Living Upstairs!

    Most landlords don't run any sort of criminal background check (which costs money) - and don't typically look to see if their tenants are registered sex offenders, unless they have some overwhelming reason to suspect such, AND are willing to pay for it. They look at a credit history and if they feel they can pay, the tenant is in. The onus for remaining within the law of where they can live or not is up to the offender (kinda stupid, huh?). You being able to find out for yourself that someone is a registered sex offender is the whole point of the online systems. You can of course make this information known to the landlord (as well as other tenants), but if the guy is paying his rent on time, not causing problems, and not living in some area that is restricted due to sex offender status, things will likely remain status quo.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Mar 2008
    Posts
    1,995

    Default Re: Sex Offender Living Upstairs

    There is another post further down:

    http://www.expertlaw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=49276

    I own small 2-4 families for rent, and I do credit, background, criminal checks, which landlords of these types of properties normally DO NOT perform, and often, when I ask questions based I what I found, applicants are surprised that I even bothered. This is why people with problems generally try to avoid major apartment complexes, with professional management, and rent with smaller owners, who generally have no idea even how to check.

    As I mentioned to the poster of that thread, I hesitate to rent to "ex-cons" simply because if I did so, I feel obligated to tell my tenants, then the whole building empties out, and if I have to re-rent, inform the new applicants, and find that no one would rent there either.

    I could take the opposite position that after a period of time, as the person there suggests of not committing a crime, as that person paid his debt to society, he should be free to rent. Because of laws restricting where "sex offenders" may live, in certain towns they wind up camping out in forests, or under highway overpasses. And in the few remaining places where the law allows them to rent, they'll find themselves locked out there too if the concensus is for landlords has an obligation to "inform the tenants".

    We might get to the point that "ex-offenders" would try to rent under "false ID's", which I have also seen. Usually, I catch these guys lying rather quickly because their stories don't add up.

    Whether the landlord has an obligation to "ban these people" (effectively by telling everyone about them) or give them a second chance is up to the landlord.

    Now, are there any children in danger??

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