The lawsuit was filed against JWB Property Management and JWB Real Estate Capital by Jacksonville Area Legal Aid in March on behalf of four people who applied to rent homes from the company. The plaintiffs claim JWB violated the Fair Housing Act in rejecting their rental applications because of the existence of an eviction filing against them, even though they were filed in error, or in one case, filed against a different person with a similar name.
“There’s not one bad apple, okay? The system is what people have to look at,” he said. “And the system is really rotten.” Like many landlords, JWB outsources the screening of rental applicants. It uses the company SafeRent Solutions, which uses “advanced technology models” to compile data on applicants’ credit and rental history to create a score to determine how likely a potential tenant is to cause a loss to a landlord.
In court documents, JWB denies that the plaintiffs were denied housing because of the eviction filings, and argued they have “… substantial, legitimate, and non-discriminatory reasons for their leasing policies…”Jacksonville attorney Christian Reeves, who is not affiliated with the case, explained. “JWB can basically argue that they use a combination of factors to determine whether someone should be denied or approved,” Reeves said.
“I don’t think it’s accurate at all, and I don’t think that decisions about giving people access to shelter should be determined by an algorithm,” he said. “It’s inhuman.”