Zumper employees say company weeded out Section 8 applicants - Business Insider

  • 📰 BusinessInsider
  • ⏱ Reading Time:
  • 195 sec. here
  • 5 min. at publisher
  • 📊 Quality Score:
  • News: 81%
  • Publisher: 51%

Canada News News

Canada Canada Latest News,Canada Canada Headlines

Zumper, a home-listing site that has raised $150 million from backers like Blackstone and Kleiner Perkins, weeded out thousands of Section 8 renters in a practice some experts say may amount to discrimination

Nine current and former employees claim, and leaked data suggests, that the listings site Zumper discriminated against Section 8 tenants as it pushed in recent years into the residential-brokerage business.This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers.

The current and former employees and the leaked data suggested that Zumper — an ambitious company with backing from prestigious investors such as Blackstone, Kleiner Perkins, and Andreessen Horowitz — exacerbated patterns of prejudice that have plagued the residential market for decades. Whitley said she submitted her information to listings posted on Zumper's site. She said she also remembered filling out a Zumper profile and answering yes when asked whether she relied on a Section 8 voucher.At the time, Whitely chalked up her experience to the lack of responsiveness any renter might encounter during a search for a new home.

Whitley was among those on an internal list provided to Business Insider by a source showing thousands of Section 8 tenants who were disqualified by Zumper. The internal reason given for her dismissal was that she had been deemed "unserviceable.

Some brokerage executives worried that leads from their own listings would be funneled away to apartments that Zumper Select was trying to fill. Meanwhile, landlords who were used to advertising apartments directly to renters on Zumper balked at the idea that the company might now insert itself and charge a costly commission.

Grady told Business Insider in a written statement that Zumper's official internal policies were clear and that employees were made aware that source-of-income discrimination against tenants with a voucher was illegal under the Fair Housing Act.In a follow-up statement, Grady said: "It is true that a majority of the Section 8 renters who applied through Zumper Select were eventually disqualified due to credit requirement or their budget.

Business Insider spoke with three sources who worked on Zumper's renter-qualification team until earlier this year. They said they communicated daily with prospective renters over email, text, and telephone, gathering information such as their move-in date, income, budget, and credit score. Zumper denied that it instructed its employees to dismiss Section 8 renters or had any policy to dismiss them.

Meanwhile, Zumper engineers based in San Francisco created a system that would automate screening out renters before they could ever even get to the renter-qualification team. The source said they investigated several such cases, searching for the renter within Zumper's Salesforce lead-management system by name. In multiple instances, they said, they discovered evidence that the tenant had, in fact, previously reached out about a particular apartment but had been disqualified by the system, for no other apparent reason than disclosing that they used a Section 8 voucher.

A source showed Business Insider a report, generated by Zumper's Salesforce customer-relationship-management system, indicating that 2,597 renters in Chicago who filled out profiles on Zumper's site in 2018 and 2019 had identified themselves as using Section 8 assistance. All but 42, the report showed, were automatically disqualified by the system, a rejection rate of over 98%.

The company also declined to explain why in the records shared with Business Insider "unserviceable" almost never was used to explain the rejection of renters who said they did not use Section 8 vouchers. During the same period in 2018 and 2019, for instance, of the 26,376 renters who created profiles on Zumper's site and said they didn't rely on Section 8 vouchers, only two were deemed "unserviceable," the data showed.

The rest were disqualified for other factors, Grady said, including having budgets that were too low for Zumper's inventory of apartments, or "prior evictions, criminal records, move-in timing issues," or because they "were working with other agents" or "were no longer interested in the process."

We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here. Read more:

 /  🏆 729. in CA
 

Thank you for your comment. Your comment will be published after being reviewed.
Please try again later.

How can I get my Section 8 back

Canada Canada Latest News, Canada Canada Headlines

Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.

Inside the life of an Uber driver in NYC during COVID-19 - Business InsiderBusiness Insider is a fast-growing business site with deep financial, media, tech, and other industry verticals. Launched in 2007, the site is now the largest business news site on the web.
Source: BusinessInsider - 🏆 729. / 51 Read more »

Inside the real reasons behind Mike Corbat's early retirement - Business InsiderBusiness Insider is a fast-growing business site with deep financial, media, tech, and other industry verticals. Launched in 2007, the site is now the largest business news site on the web. They said the same about MLK,slavery,segregation,share cropping ,under paid blacks ,systemic racism but praise white nationalists terrorists who walks the streets with guns.
Source: BusinessInsider - 🏆 729. / 51 Read more »

Inside Citi's exec shakeup — Chime's latest round — Buy now, pay later's future - Business InsiderBusiness Insider is a fast-growing business site with deep financial, media, tech, and other industry verticals. Launched in 2007, the site is now the largest business news site on the web.
Source: BusinessInsider - 🏆 729. / 51 Read more »

Inside Balyasny's training program for hedge fund portfolio managers - Business InsiderBusiness Insider is a fast-growing business site with deep financial, media, tech, and other industry verticals. Launched in 2007, the site is now the largest business news site on the web.
Source: BusinessInsider - 🏆 729. / 51 Read more »

Mike Corbat's memo to Citigroup employees to think differently - Business InsiderBusiness Insider is a fast-growing business site with deep financial, media, tech, and other industry verticals. Launched in 2007, the site is now the largest business news site on the web. Look at the current chart's for OpenLearning=ASX$OLL you should see that the bulls roared bullish yesterday for OLL. OpenLearning has broken out into a new higher trend and looks to be going 🚀🚀 Motley fool article on OpenLearning=ASX$OLL🚀🚀 Drive it until it breaks?
Source: BusinessInsider - 🏆 729. / 51 Read more »