In housing

House

A house is a building or structure that has the ability to be occupied for dwelling by human beings or other creatures. The term house includes many kinds of different dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures...

, The Registry is a risk management tool used by landlord

Landlord

A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called a tenant . When a juristic person is in this position, the term landlord is used. Other terms include lessor and owner...

s as a screening mechanism for prospective renters. The term is most commonly used as a form of synecdoche

Synecdoche

Synecdoche , meaning "simultaneous understanding") is a figure of speech in which a term is used in one of the following ways:* Part of something is used to refer to the whole thing , or...

 to refer to a handful of the most common registry systems in the United States, "The New American Registry", "The First American Registry", "The Registry Saferent", and "The U.D. Registry".

Mechanism

Each registry automatically receives a notification from various metropolitan housing courts whenever any tenant is sued by a landlord. In areas without housing courts, lists of named defendants in unlawful detainer (eviction

Eviction

How you doing???? Eviction is the removal of a tenant from rental property by the landlord. Depending on the laws of the jurisdiction, eviction may also be known as unlawful detainer, summary possession, summary dispossess, forcible detainer, ejectment, and repossession, among other terms...

) suits will be compiled from court records. Usually there is a period of time before those records become public, and if the suit is resolved before that, the names will not be listed. Even if the tenant successfully defends themselves, they are kept in the registries. In addition, there are procedures by which landlords can report tenants who skip or are habitually late paying rent. Almost all landlords subscribe to these major registry services and screen potential applicants; many landlords will reject tenants on the basis of their presence in the registry, because the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior.

Criticism

• Several class action
  Class action
  In law, a class action, a class suit, or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued...
  
  lawsuits have been brought against individual registries in the names of tenants who have won their cases in housing court but remain blacklisted. Most of these cases are settled out of court.
• In addition to the registries, many complain of the various housing courts' complicit involvement, by providing the names of the defendants through an automated service. This is an often unspoken source of revenue for these departments, as they generally charge $0.05 per listing.

External links

• California U.D. Registry and how listed tenants can protect their rights and fight back: http://www.caltenantlaw.com/credit.htm
• Class action suit brought in New York against First American Regisrtry http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07E0DD113CF934A15751C0A9629C8B63