A popular tenant screening company used by low-income housing landlords has been providing inaccurate and biased background checks, potentially blocking qualified renters from being approved for apartments, according to a
Those screenings are based on poor quality data often riddled with errors, according to the lawsuit filed in a D.C. superior court by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the National Association of Consumer Advocates . They allege that RentGrow knows the data it uses can be unreliable and that the company’s entirely automated background check process doesn’t include sufficient fact checking to identify and prevent mistakes.
Even when the data is accurate, EPIC and NACA allege, much of the information RentGrow’s risk scoring algorithms draw on, like criminal and eviction history, reflect systemic racial biases that disadvantage Black and Hispanic renters.