As senior managing attorney for the King County Bar Association’s Housing Justice Project in Seattle, Edmund Witter helps renters facing eviction.
Losing their home is one of the most stressful things a renter can go through, but after being evicted, some of Witter’s clients are more concerned about something else—their rental records.
He said: “The long-term effects are really daunting on a lot of our clients’ minds because they feel like that may not be something that’s recoverable from any time soon, whereas they may be able to get through the next week, the next month.”
Past evictions appear on tenant screenings that flag applicants with low earnings, poor credit scores and criminal histories.
Denials stemming from screenings often push renters from their neighborhoods into lower-quality homes in more segregated areas with fewer resources, housing advocates told Streetlight.
Inaccurate screening reports sometimes result in landlords rejecting tenants, regardless of the flawed information.
Background check services often use AI technology to scrounge court records for applicants’ names. Screening software commonly retrieves records for other people with the same name or from sealed court cases. The software might repeat errors found in court records or create its own.
Landlords often won’t accept additional information from applicants that would show a screening report is wrong or that their situation has changed and they would be a reliable renter.
The Justice Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have said tenant screeners are subject to the Fair Housing Act, which bans housing discrimination, even if their results are based on algorithms.
Tenant screenings often use algorithms that create “risk scores” for renters. The reports may contain false information that renters can’t dispute. Rejected applicants often wind up spending more money and time than other renters to find housing.
In October, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint that said TransUnion had violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act by failing to ensure its rental screenings were accurate and withholding the source of false information from renters. A proposed settlement would require TransUnion to pay $15 million in connection with those allegations.
Eviction records can route renters to temporary housing
Tenant screenings add to the challenges and costs to house people experiencing homelessness. These background checks often flag applicants as being “high risk” because of issues that may have caused someone’s homelessness in the first place—things like arrests, evictions or job loss that led to back-rent or a low credit score.
“The screenings typically make it very difficult for apartments to want to rent to them, or they’ll want to charge an additional fee, like a high-risk fee or a nonrefundable deposit,” said Elizabeth Banks, chief programs officer for HOPE Atlanta.
[ Read more: HUD hasn’t inspected some subsidized properties for a decade or longer, agency data says ]
Some landlords ask for double the deposit, she said, “which is nearly impossible for people to be able to afford.”
Homeless service providers say that risk fees have become common in the last few years. Landlords may charge risk fees to renters based on their income, criminal or credit histories, prior evictions or money owed to another housing provider.
In Seattle, Housing Justice Project surveys have found that about a quarter of its clients who have been evicted live with family or friends or in other temporary housing, Witter said. Another quarter are in the shelter system, and only about 10 to 15% find permanent housing.
Renters who do find housing after an eviction pay more than other renters to live in less desirable places.
“They end up paying more in rent, despite the fact their circumstances have actually gotten worse,” Witter said. “That’s ultimately the power that the screening report has because a lot of landlords will not rent to them unless, frankly, the tenant’s willing to pay and cover the cost of some of that risk that the landlord sees in the screening report.”
Rent increases fuel rejections of low and mid-income renters
Three housing advocates told Streetlight that landlords commonly reject applicants based on their income.
“That has grown more difficult to manage because of the rise in rent costs,” said April Doshier, executive director of Food and Shelter in Norman, Oklahoma. “Someone living on disability income is now spending close to 90% of their income on rent alone, and landlords just won’t rent to somebody in that kind of precarious situation.”
[ Read more: Housing or treatment first? This Oklahoma shelter highlights the complexity of fighting homelessness ]
Section 8 housing vouchers and other federal housing assistance cover housing costs based on fair market rents, which HUD calculates each year.
Fair market rents have a reputation for not always keeping up with local rent increases, especially during rapid, community-wide rent hikes that many places have seen since 2020.
HUD’s 2024 fair market rent for a one-bedroom unit in the 30303 zip code of Atlanta is $1,960, up about 20% from last year. The median rent for Atlanta is $2,095, according to Zillow estimates from January—more than $100 over the fair market rate.
“It’s harder to find units that meet HUD’s criteria,” Banks said, “And that puts a lot of burden on the agencies because if you rent a unit that is above (fair market rent), the agency is responsible to cover the difference.”
To meet the most common income requirement—that rent equal a third or less of a tenants’ income—an Atlanta renter seeking a $2,000 apartment would need an annual salary of at least $72,000.
“Minimum wage is not equal to that,” Banks said. “So you’ve got to start thinking about that kind of thing and also the safety and the quality of housing that is in that affordable range. You’re sacrificing a quality neighborhood sometimes when you have to go into a unit that you can afford and that you can obtain (after going) through various credit screenings, etc.”
How eviction bans can discriminate against Black renters
In Cook County, Illinois, home to Chicago, Black renters are three times more likely than renters of other races to receive evictions, several studies have shown. Because Black renters disproportionately experience evictions, some housing advocates argue that eviction bans are discriminatory and violate the Fair Housing Act.
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Last year, HOPE Fair Housing Center in Wheaton, Illinois filed a housing discrimination complaint with HUD against Oak Park Apartments in Chicago suburb Oak Park. The fair housing center, which isn’t affiliated with HOPE Atlanta, alleged the apartments’ blanket no-evictions policy disproportionately causes Black renters, especially women, to be denied housing and increases segregation.
Oak Park Apartments uses tenant screening services that sometimes include sealed records in their reports, the complaint said, and the apartments don’t allow rejected applicants to provide relevant information or review their applications.
Josefina Navar, deputy director of HOPE Fair Housing Center, said that because the apartments are one of the largest housing providers in Oak Park, their eviction ban restricts renters’ access to the local rental market.
“A policy like this has a really large impact on this community because it limits the places where folks can apply for housing within a municipality, such as Oak Park,” she said.
Some public housing authorities are loosening criminal background screening requirements
HUD has advised public housing agencies that criminal records, especially arrests, shouldn’t result in automatic denials for assistance.
HUD’s background check policies require public housing authorities to reject applicants in a few cases. For instance, people who are required to register as sex offenders for life and people who have been convicted of making meth on federally-assisted property are ineligible for federal housing assistance.
In addition to HUD’s policies, many public housing authorities have their own denial policies.
[ Read more: Criminal records can lock people out of housing assistance. HUD’s creating new rules to help ]
In recent years, some local housing authorities have updated their background check policies to reduce barriers to affordable housing for people with criminal histories.
Last year, the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency updated its policies on screening voucher applicants to reduce its look-back period for certain offenses from three years to 12 months, agency spokesperson Holley Mangham said.
In October, the agency’s screenings stopped including records older than 12 months for drug-related and violent crimes, as well as crimes threatening the health or safety of other residents or threats against the property owner or other housing workers.
Other public housing authorities are keeping their policies the same.
Norman Housing Authority Executive Director Karen Canavan, for instance, is skeptical that background checks present problems for renters.
When asked how tenant screenings affect Norman Housing Authority’s voucher holders, Canavan said: “That’s a lot of speculation because we are subsidizing the tenants’ rent, and it’s really the landlord’s choice how they want to screen.”
Connect with resources mentioned in this story
- Food and Shelter in Norman, Oklahoma: Learn more and find out how to get involved.
- HOPE Atlanta: Learn more and find out how to volunteer.
- HOPE Fair Housing Center in Wheaton, Illinois: Learn more and find out how to volunteer.
- King County Bar Association’s Housing Justice Project: Learn more and find out how to volunteer.
Contact Streetlight editor Mollie Bryant at 405-990-0988 or bryant@streetlightnews.org. Follow her reporting by joining our newsletter.
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