In the 1990s, Tim Zehring had an idea to make apartment buildings safer. As a crime prevention officer with the Mesa Police Department, he was concerned by how much time police spent responding to service calls from apartment complexes. If there were a way to empower landlords to handle matters themselves, he thought, it would reduce the burden on law enforcement. Partnering with an Arizona-based landlord attorney, he devised the “Crime Free Lease Addendum,” a document attached to a standard lease agreement that gives landlords broad discretion to define what is considered “criminal activity.” The addendum allows a landlord to evict a tenant based on an accusation alone, even if there is no conviction, charge or even a crime. Today, most Arizona tenants sign the crime free addendum when they rent an apartment, even if they don’t fully understand its implications. Though the document originated in Mesa, it is now used by landlords in hundreds of cities across the country and internationally. Zehring intended the addendum to make evictions easier for landlords so local law enforcement could spend more time on serious crime. In the materials he developed to train police officers and landlords on how to implement it, the addendum is referred to as a “tool for eviction.” Before the addendum, Zehring described an adversarial relationship between landlords and local police.“It was exactly what we needed to get along,” Zehring said of the lease addendum’s peace …
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