This research studies how tenant screening services’ presentation of information influences landlord decisions. Tenant screening services utilize criminal records, eviction records, and credit score databases to produce reports that landlords use to inform their decisions about who to rent to. However, little is known about how landlords assess the information presented by tenant screening reports. Through a behavioral experiment with landlords using simulated tenant screening reports, this study shows that landlords use blanket screening policies, that they conflate the existence of tenant records with outcomes (e.g., eviction filings with executed evictions), and that they display, on average, tendencies toward automation bias that are influenced by the risk assessments and scores presented by tenant screening reports. I argue that maintaining blanket screening policies and automation bias, combined with the downstream effects of creating and using racially biased eviction and criminal records, means that people of color will inevitably experience disproportionate exclusion from rental housing due to perceived “risk” on the part of landlords.

1. Which Information Matters?
Measuring Landlord
Assessment of Tenant
Screening Reports
Wonyoung So
Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
October 25th, 2022

2. A story of the Arroyos

3. Perpetuating housing injustice
through technologies
Landlord Tech
Illustration by Frederick Noland / [people. power. media]

4. Tenant Screening Services
Use crime records, eviction records, and
credit score databases to produce reports
that inform a landlord’s decision to rent to
a tenant.
Act as Tenant Blacklisting
High Error Rate
Lack of Clear Explanation
May Violate the Fair Housing Act because
of the use of discriminatory data.

5. The FHA prohibits discriminatory housing policies
or practices on the basis of protected classes
such as race, religion, sex, disability, familial
status, or national origin.
The Supreme Court ruled that under the FHA,
tenants can make a disparate impact claim (2015)
Fair Housing Act (FHA) and
Disparate Impact
Disparate Treatment: Tenants Screening Services
or landlords have a discriminatory intent on the
reports and their decision based on it.
Disparate Impact: Even if they do not have a
discriminatory intent, if their policies or practices
caused a disparate impact, they would hold
accountable under the FHA.

6. Eviction
Filing
Third-party
data brokers
Tenant Screening
Services
Files evictions even if
landlords don’t really want
to do so; Rather, they just
want to collect late rents.
They scrape eviction records
from housing courts; after they
collect, it is hard to guarantee
the accuracy when it comes to
sealing and expunging the
record
Landlords deny based on
the information displayed in
tenant screening reports;
all sorts of biases can be
incorporated in this process
We know remarkably little about
what is happening here; this part is
what I address
Criminal
Records
Complexity in criminal justice
procedure; Black and Latino
people are disproportionately
more presented
* yes I need a separate
research project on credit
history and tenant screening

7. 1) To understand how landlords assess the content and/or
presentation of tenant screening reports and use these
reports in their rental decision.
2) Speci
f
ically, to understand how landlords make
decisions when presented with data about tenants’
prior evictions and criminal records.
Research Questions

8. Landlords would disqualify reports
containing any criminal or eviction
records, no matter the outcome,
conditions, or context.
This hypothesis is designed to test whether the content and
presentation of tenant screening reports a
f
fect landlord
behavior.
Research Hypothesis

9. But how can I test landlords’
assessment of 1) private companies’
products that 2) have all the
sensitive information?
That’s where all the kinds of creative tactics introduced in the
study…

10. Collecting Sample
Tenant Screening
Reports
Creating simulated
tenant screening
reports
Behavioral
Experiment with
Landlords
To have the sense of 1) data
structure and 2) how tenant
screening reports look.

11. Collecting Sample
Tenant Screening
Reports
Creating simulated
tenant screening
reports
Behavioral
Experiment with
Landlords
To have the sense of 1) data
structure and 2) how tenant
screening reports look.
By mimicking the real
reports, I identi
f
ied three
di
f
ferent types

12. Collecting Sample
Tenant Screening
Reports
Creating simulated
tenant screening
reports
Behavioral
Experiment with
Landlords
To have the sense of 1) data
structure and 2) how tenant
screening reports look.
By mimicking the real
reports, I identi
f
ied three
di
f
ferent types
To measure how they read
and accept/deny tenants

13. Collecting Sample
Reports
Source: FOIA documents from the Markup investigation; sample reports
for the companies’ advertisement.

19. Behavioral Experiment:
Simulated Screening
Reports
These
information
is same

20. Type 1: Show Records, No Detail, No Risk Score
(Corelogic CrimSAFE)

21. Type 2: Show Records, With Detail, With Risk Score
(Corelogic SafeRent, National Tenant Network)
Need to click
this arrow to
show the detail

22. Type 3: Show Records, With Detail, No Risk Score
(Many other tenant screening reports)

23. Behavioral Experiment
209 landlords on
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Each landlord were randomly assigned
one of the three report types, and then
accepted/conditionally accepted/denied
25 applications that includes reports of
risk scores. (5 low, 10 mid, 10 high
reports)
209 * 25 = 5225 decisions

24. Behavioral Experiment
209 participants (Homeowners + High
Acceptance Rate)
on Amazon Mechanical Turk
Each landlord were randomly assigned
one of the three report type, and then
accepted/conditionally accepted/denied
25 applications that includes reports of
risk scores. (5 low, 10 mid, 10 high
reports)
209 * 25 = 5225 decisions

25. Behavioral Experiment
209 participants (Homeowners + High
Acceptance Rate)
on Amazon Mechanical Turk
Each landlord were randomly assigned
one of the three report type, and then
accepted/conditionally accepted/denied
25 applications that includes reports of
risk scores. (5 low, 10 mid, 10 high
reports)
209 * 25 = 5225 decisions

26. 1. Logistic Regression Analysis for
landlord decisions
2. Linear Regression Analysis for
conditionally accepted applications
3. Landlords’ Decision Strategy
1-1) All applications
1-2) Reports that have criminal or eviction records
Results

27. Blanket policies: Landlords don’t use the additional
information favorable for tenants.

28. Automation Bias: Landlords deny tenants more
when there are scores presented.

29. More information > same as mere existence of a record
Showing a score > more security deposit

30. When disaggregated into reports that have eviction and criminal
records, it shows that landlords tend to treat all the eviction records
similarly - regardless it was executed or just
f
iled or without any
information, except when a report shows it is “high risk.”

31. On the other hand, landlords are likely to deny more applications
with high-scored criminal records - the odds ratio are lower and
statistically signi
f
icant, compared to showing executed eviction
records.

32. Almost a third of the landlords answered that they
automatically added a security deposit and did not
consider the conditions of criminal records in doing so.
Nearly half of the landlords answered that they
maintain blanket screening policies against eviction
records.
Results - Freeform
Answers

33. “Financial issues were a bigger deal, especially
evictions. Who wants to deal with that headache?”
“I put more weight into the eviction records [than
criminal records]”
“I basically wouldn’t rent to anyone with an eviction, it
doesn’t matter how long ago or how the case was
disposed”
Results re: eviction
records

34. “I wouldn’t let someone selling or doing cocaine in my
rental. But if it was just a marijuana possession then I
would not mind”
“I look at those with criminal convictions di
f
ferently, as
long as it was in the past”
“Tenants are acceptable [...if] they are not a felon [...]
and are not a sex o
f
fender,”
“If a case is dropped, I would consider it, but I will
de
f
initely not consider convicted criminals”
Results re: criminal
records

35. Policy Implications
Re: Eviction
f
ilings
Sealing and expunging eviction records
at the point of
f
iling
Similar HUD regulation on eviction record (currently
there are only for arrest records)
Re: security deposits, tenant screening services
increasingly turn their calculation of risk into security
deposits - it has huge implication on housing voucher
holders and low-income renters

36. Policy Implications
Holding tenant screening services accountable using
the Fair Housing Act’s disparate impact standard

37. Thanks!