Looking to rent an apartment? Prepare to be subjected to the unaccountable algorithms that landlords across the nation are using to screen tenants.
@lkirchner reports in a joint investigation with @MattGoldstein26 of @nytimes /1
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They found that these screening companies often use the loosest possible standards for matching names, including so-called “wild-card” searches where the records of anyone whose names shares first three letters similar as yours can be included in your report. /2
Credit bureaus use much stricter standards for name-matching. In 2017, the big three said they would only match records that contained the same name, address and SSN or date of birth. The tenant screening industry has not made a similar commitment. /3
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Some of the people most harmed by these loose matching standards are people who tend to share common last names. More than 12 million Latinos, for instance, share just 26 surnames, according to the census. /4
In typical Markup fashion, we show you all our work: 46 contracts public housing authorities have with for-profit screening services and more than 150 lawsuits where tenants alleged that the data in their reports was faulty. /5
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And if you want to know what to do if you are confronted with an faulty screening report, @lkirchner breaks down your rights. /end
themarkup.org/ask-the-markup…
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