Do you accept folks with only "friends and family" rental history

[D J Burand]

We have been at it for about three years, and though we have mostly established our basic screening criteria, we keep running in to new situations.  While I've found many references to looking for 'x' number of years of rental history in other posts, I can't find anything that directly answers this nuanced question:

We have a couple that meets our income, criminal (lack thereof), number of occupants, pet policy, etc.  

The catch is that for rental history, they have only provided two prior references, both in-laws or family, that they have lived with over the past year.  I have already contacted those references, and have verified that the folks lived there...  And they got good reviews.  The prospective tenants are 25 (so not just kids graduating).  Here's my question to you all:

When you have an otherwise good applicant, except they have no rental history or have only lived with family and friends, do you work with that?  Do you require additional deposits or guarantees?  I'm seeing a lot of references to just flatly looking for x years of good tenancy verified by a landlord, but what if this is their first move on their own, and they can tell you where they lived but don't have a non-family landlord to ask about them?

[Michaela G.]

I have done so in the past, but have never had had a good experience. It seems they all put one over on me and I ended up having to evict them. I will no longer accept those that lived with family in the years prior, as I assume now that that is a cover-up for an eviction (the eviction may have gone to mediation and not finished and thus wont' show as eviction)