Two years ago, Mary Louis applied to rent an apartment in Granada Highlands in Malden, Massachusetts. She loves that the apartment has two fully-equipped bathrooms and has an on-site swimming pool. But the landlord rejected her apartment, allegedly because she was scored by a tenant screening algorithm run by SafeRent.
Louis responded with references to prove 16 years of on-time rent payments, to no avail. Instead, she chose another apartment that costs more than $200 a month in an area with a higher crime rate. But a class action lawsuit filed by Louis and others May argued that SafeRent’s score was partly based on information on credit reports that led to discrimination against Black and Hispanic tenants who violated the policy. Fair Housing Act. The groundbreaking act banned discrimination on the basis of race, disability, religion, or national origin and was passed by Congress in 1968 a week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
That case is still pending, but the US Department of Justice last week used a court filing to send a warning to landlords and the creators of tenant-screening algorithms. . SafeRent has argued that the algorithms used to screen tenants are not compliant with the Fair Housing Act, as its scores only advise landlords, not make decisions. The DOJ’s summary, filed jointly with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, refutes that claim, saying the statute and related case law are unambiguous.
“Housing companies and tenant screeners that use algorithms and data to screen tenants are not exempt from liability when their practices disproportionately people of color have access to equal housing opportunities,” Justice Department civil rights chief Kristen Clarke said in a statement. declare.
As in many areas of business and government, algorithms that assign scores to people have become more common in the housing industry. But while claimed to improve efficiency or identify “better tenants,” as SafeRent’s marketing materials suggest, tenant screening algorithms can contribute to persistent history housing discrimination, despite decades of civil rights law. one year 2021 Research by the US National Bureau of Economic Research used bots that used names associated with different groups to apply to more than 8,000 landlords that discovered significant discrimination against tenants of color and especially American descent Fly.
“It is a relief that this is being taken seriously—there is an understanding that algorithms are not inherently neutral or objective and worthy,” said Michele Gilman, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and former civil. scrutinized as human decision makers”. Attorney at the Department of Justice. “The fact that the DOJ is involved in this, I think it’s a big move.”
One 2020 survey of The Markup and Propublica have found that tenant-screening algorithms often encounter obstacles such as identity confusion, especially for people of color with common surnames. A Propublica review of algorithms conducted by Texas-based company RealPage last year found it can rent increase.
