Opaque AI-Powered Tenant Screening Threatens Renter Protections
New research explores how use of automated tenant screening technology by landlords affects renters in California
San Francisco, CA – AI-enabled tenant screening systems have infiltrated the rental market, but understanding of how these tools work is remarkably opaque making it increasingly difficult to enforce a suite of housing and consumer protections.
Today, TechEquity Collaborative and Wonyoung So, Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, released their co-authored paper, “Screened Out of Housing: How AI-Powered Tenant Screening Hurts Renters.”
They surveyed over 1,000 renters and 400 landlords in California—the state with the second-largest share of renter households—to shed light on how landlords use information from Consumer Reporting Agencies to make rental decisions.
Key findings from the paper include:
- AI-enabled tenant screening systems are widely used in the rental market with almost two-thirds of the landlords surveyed indicating they have received tenant screening reports that contained some AI-generated score or recommendation.
- The use of minority report-esque predictive scoring of renters is prevalent—twenty percent of landlords reported receiving information that claims to predict future renter behavior from screening companies.
- Renters are often left in the dark, deepening power imbalances that threaten housing rights. The survey asked renters to provide the name of the company that conducted their application screening. Only 3% provided the name of a screening or consumer reporting agency; 76% mistakenly reported the name of their landlord or property management company.
- AI tenant screening systems disproportionately impact the most vulnerable renters. The survey found the highest prevalence of AI-enabled tenant screening systems among landlords who serve lower-income renters, and among those who own a smaller number of units.
“Our research provided a first-of-its-kind dataset to understand renters’ experiences applying for rental housing and how landlords interact with algorithmic tenant screening products in California,” said MIT Doctoral Candidate Wonyoung So. “We found incredible opacity in how these screening companies operate and our findings from this survey emphasize that renters need real transparency into how decisions about their housing options are made.”
“While discriminatory practices and outcomes in housing are not new, the addition of AI screening technologies has the potential to amplify those harms at an unprecedented scale,” said Hannah Holloway, VP of Housing Programs at TechEquity. “We need agile new regulations on rental screening technology to ensure AI does not further inequities in the housing system. We must shift the burden of upholding housing protections from under-resourced renters to the companies that deploy these technologies and the landlords who use them. ”
The paper outlines three recommendations in addition to HUD’s recent guidance on the use of AI in tenant screening to prevent these automated systems from undermining civil rights protections in the housing market:
- Screening companies must be required to close information asymmetries that further inequities.
- Regulators must shift the burden of monitoring AI and enforcing protections from individuals to the industry.
- Landlords must be held responsible for upholding renters’ rights.
Screened Out of Housing: How AI-Powered Tenant Screening Hurts Renters was funded in part by the Mozilla Technology Fund (MTF) and is available at for download here.
About TechEquity
TechEquity raises public consciousness about economic equity issues that result from the tech industry’s products and practices, and advocates for change that ensures tech’s evolution benefits everyone. The organization conducts original research grounded by the stories of the people impacted by inequitable systems, develops policy and industry recommendations, and focuses on the implementation of policies and industry standards to ensure meaningful impact for generations to come.