[jnwatson]

If a landlord nulls out the rental debt, that's completely on them. I would be quite wary renting to a person that missed 6-12 months of rent on their previous lease.

These debts are going to be chasing folks for a long time.

[cableshaft]

The pandemic made the situation a little different than usual. Many people got laid off for no fault of their own last year and couldn't find new work also from no fault of their own, the cities were just shut down for a while.

The US government decided they didn't want these people to just go homeless en masse (at least not in the middle of a pandemic) and thus put the eviction moratorium in place, thus showing that they recognize we were in an extraordinary situation.

Don't know about you, but I can't blame people for choosing not to go homeless when the government explicitly said you don't have to go homeless even if you can't pay your rent. So I wouldn't negatively judge ability to pay rent in this case if I were a landlord.

Granted, I might prefer someone who didn't get behind on payments if I had two otherwise equal applicants, but I wouldn't assume they're just not going to pay rent this time as well.

[root_axis]

Well if the landlord doesn't pursue the debt as the OP stipulates, you wouldn't really know about the missed rent.

[toomuchtodo]

Landlords call previous landlords for references. To my knowledge, there is nothing against the law in sharing missed or late rent payment information with a new landlord.

[root_axis]

This isn't very common because it's easy for tenants to lie and provide fake references or say they were living with a parent or relative, it's typically a waste of time for the landlord. Most landlords simply rely on official records like credit and background checks, proof of income etc.