[HN Gopher] Shadow credit score could decide whether you get an ...
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Shadow credit score could decide whether you get an apartment
Author : danso
Score : 74 points
Date : 2022-03-29 15:22 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.propublica.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.propublica.org)
| ouid wrote:
| I realize this isn't a terribly constructive comment, but...
|
| AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
| AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| Is anyone else concerned that the screening report just has
| yes/no for existence of landlord-tenant court records? Regardless
| of whether the tenant won (or even started, it could be the
| landlord getting sued for security deposit for example) the case.
| lookalike74 wrote:
| The yes/no in some cases could allow fixed-income people to be
| approved when they are short of the required income or credit
| history because they've never had a rental problem. A lot of
| fixed-income seniors pay a large portion of their income to
| rent but have done so reliably for decades, for example.
| function_seven wrote:
| So now that I know about these records, I better think twice
| before asserting my rights as a tenant. If my landlord
| decides to steal my deposit, ignore the leaky roof, and
| refuse to fix the furnace, I'll just roll over and take it.
| Can't have a "Yes" on my permanent record; won't be able to
| rent in the future!
| phil21 wrote:
| This has been the advice for quite some time. Just having
| court cases on your record can be seen as a black mark for
| both housing and some employers regardless of you winning
| them or their merit.
|
| It's not a majority yet, but it's been slowly eating it's
| way into these sectors for the past couple decades.
|
| Similar "scores" are being silently enacted for such
| trivial things like returning merchandise to retail stores.
| Stores now share information and will outright reject
| returns if you are deemed to have done too many returns in
| the past at a totally unrelated business.
|
| Leave town with a $2 bank balance and forget to close the
| account out? Good luck getting a new bank account for the
| next 7 years with the "minimum account balance" fees
| drawing it into the negative regardless of fixing the
| oversight when notified.
|
| Same for chargebacks on your credit card - chargeback more
| than then the calculated long-term EV of your account and
| you will find the process all of a sudden becomes very
| difficult and your account is likely closed shortly
| thereafter.
|
| Same goes with Amazon - have a high value account that does
| $50k/yr in purchases? Returns are always granted no
| questions asked. Low value? You will start seeing pushback
| from customer service very quickly and account closure
| regardless of the validity or reasons for return.
|
| The above are all examples I've personally experienced or
| witnessed.
|
| Airline mileage programs that turned into revenue programs
| are likely where most of this ends up. Companies simply
| will stop servicing low EV customers altogether on an
| individual vs. the group basis as it's done now.
| taylortrusty wrote:
| Honest question: what's wrong with any of these examples?
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| Just to take the bank example: the bank should block any
| attempts to remove money from the account once it goes
| negative and then put a hold on it until the owner
| contacts them. Charging negative and continuously
| charging fees should just be illegal.
| glogla wrote:
| > So now that I know about these records, I better think
| twice before asserting my rights as a tenant.
|
| Yes, I'm sure that is the point.
| kazinator wrote:
| The point is that this yes/no datum is going to be
| interpreted as a black stain, regardless of what it means.
|
| A landlord reviewing 50 applications for a place isn't going
| to go into the particulars. Depending on the landlord's
| approach, anything with a yes won't make the short list.
|
| Credit reports should not have suspicious stains whose
| meaning could be that there is in fact nothing wrong (there
| was a dispute which was caused by someone else, and resolved
| in the applicant's favor).
| jeffbee wrote:
| The obvious solution is the one I've long advocated in this
| forum and elsewhere: a housing market where landlords can
| pick and choose tenants should not be permitted to exist.
| Build housing until the median number of applicants for a
| vacant home becomes 1 or 0. Make landlords desperate again.
| reedjosh wrote:
| > Build housing until the median number of applicants for
| a vacant home becomes 1 or 0. Make landlords desperate
| again
|
| This is so silly.
|
| Who's going to build these hypothetical housing units? So
| many that there are more houses than applicants.
| trashcan01 wrote:
| If landlords aren't allowed to pick tenants, then:
|
| 1. Bad tenants will have no incentive not to harm the
| property and the neighborhood.
|
| 2. Landlords will be forced to pay for insurance to cover
| all the bad things that tenants are now free to do.
|
| 3. Rents will rise to cover the costs of the insurance.
| Conscientious tenants will be penalized.
|
| 4. Even otherwise conscientious tenants will start to cut
| corners since they are having to pay for the insurance
| anyway and it's clearly unfair.
|
| What a nasty situation for conscientious tenants
| landlords and neighbors you are advocating.
|
| Only the least conscientious people win.
| gpderetta wrote:
| You can make the exact symmetrical argument if tenants
| are not allowed to pick landlords (which is what happen
| in practice). Well, except about rent increase that
| happens anyways.
| dont__panic wrote:
| That would also be addressed by a more detailed explanation
| of court records, or a binary yes/no of whether the tenant
| was ultimately found guilty of a transgression against
| previous landlords, no?
|
| The previous comment is pointing out that this could be a
| problem if you've been sued by an unscrupulous landlord in
| the past. That problem exists for fixed income people as
| well.
| dantillberg wrote:
| Indeed, though is there any protected status in the US for
| "people that make use of the court system" that would bar such
| discrimination? As a landlord, legal costs will eat into your
| margins real fast. The landlord uses this service to gauge
| their own risk taking this person on as a tenant, and the
| presumption (accurate, I'd imagine) is that past landlord-
| tenant court records predicts a higher chance that this
| landlord will incur legal costs (and possibly also negative
| judgments) with this tenant as well.
|
| Personally, I certainly don't like this practice as a
| prospective tenant, but it would nonetheless be tempting to
| consider using it were I a landlord.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > it would nonetheless be tempting to consider using it were
| I a landlord.
|
| Of course it would. I still don't like this practice.
|
| > is there any protected status in the US for "people that
| make use of the court system" that would bar such
| discrimination?
|
| There are certain laws that protect people who use the court
| system in some ways, but there is not (to my knowledge) a
| general protection. But whistleblowers, litigants in
| harassment claims, etc. have anti-retaliatory protections.
| j_walter wrote:
| Would it be considered retaliation to not hire a candidate
| who was a whistleblower at their previous company though?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I do not think the whistleblower has any right to legal
| protection outside their previous company. Which means
| they may have to work their for life.
| mrfusion wrote:
| The FCRA was designed to prevent this kind of thing. I wonder how
| they get around it?
| g051051 wrote:
| The FCRA defines how a credit report can be used, and rental
| decisions are considered a "permissible purpose".
| mrfusion wrote:
| It does a whole lot more than that, brother. Consumers are
| allowed to correct inaccuracies for one.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Reporting_Act
| g051051 wrote:
| I'm not sure what it has to do with your question, which
| was "The FCRA was designed to prevent this kind of thing. I
| wonder how they get around it?". Landlords have permissible
| purpose to check your credit report, so they aren't
| "getting around it".
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The problem is that these guys aren't covered by the FCRA.
|
| That's what we really need to do--extend the FCRA to cover all
| companies that gather external data to make decisions that are
| important to the person. Apply the same standards to all forms
| of background check--it waddles and quacks, the FCRA applies.
|
| I would also change the once-a-year check to say once-a-day.
|
| The fundamental problem is that the economics of all
| background-check companies are skewed towards false denials.
| The companies are happy to have dodged a bullet (bad renter,
| bad job applicant etc), nothing tells them that the bullet
| wasn't real. (And what of those of us whose backgrounds aren't
| exactly verifiable? I have more than 20 years of employment at
| companies that no longer exist.)
| atlgator wrote:
| What I don't like about this type of journalism is how they use
| one instance to set up a boogeyman that they want to scare all of
| society with. The woman had a 632 credit score in 2021. The
| average American FICO score was 714 at the same time. She was
| well below average at a time when housing demands are at all time
| highs.
|
| https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/what-is-the-aver...
| asdff wrote:
| Fresh out of college it probably took me several years to reach
| 700. You have no credit history. I applied for a card in
| college and coupled with no income, all I qualified for was a
| secured card. Got denied from the usual suspects of cash back
| cards for a while. Then once I got cards my limit would only be
| like $500 per card so you would max it frequently if you used
| it as a normal person would unless you remembered to pay it off
| every week. It probably took four or five years for a credit
| card company to give me a reasonable limit in the thousands,
| and that came from the bank that I had an account with for 15
| years prior.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| coincidentally, as far as I know, US Court precedent works
| exactly the same way, in that a single, real world case is the
| setting for deciding the applicability, reasonableness and
| effectiveness of laws on the books, not the "spirit and
| principle in general" .. IANL
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Kind of.
|
| Most court cases do not set any precedent. If you think the
| judge made a legal mistake in your case, you can appeal
| regarding that specific legal question.
|
| The appalete court can then issue a ruling on that specific
| question of law. If they find the lower court was in error,
| they would typically send it back to the lower court to redo
| under the new guidance.
|
| Sometimes the specifics of the case do interfere with the
| appelet court's judgement, but the entire system is set up to
| minimize that.
| atlgator wrote:
| Even a single court case is a complex evaluation of current
| law and precedent to that point. This on the other hand is a
| straw man fallacy.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I've never missed a payment, have over 6 years of on time
| payments, never even carried a balance on a card, and never
| been denied an application, yet my score has dipped as low as
| 640 just because of a "high" amount of credit checks, because I
| like to take advantage of "spend $1000 on our card and get
| $200" promotions that come in the mail. 630 doesn't necessarily
| mean anything bad at all.
| atlgator wrote:
| I didn't use the word bad. I said below average. It's a
| quantitative observation. When housing demand is at all time
| highs apartments can be as selective as they want. If they
| have 20 applications for a single open unit who are they
| picking?
| asdff wrote:
| And that's why I think average kinda sucks here. Who is the
| average person renting? Maybe they are low income, maybe
| they are fresh out of college with no credit history at
| all, but in either case its probably a different makeup of
| financial backgrounds than what you see in homeowners and
| therefore the population on aggregate. Lumping these groups
| into the general population which includes homeowners who
| have been paying off credit cards for decades makes no
| sense. Consider the context when determining what these
| numbers should be, otherwise you are misrepresenting the
| shape of your data.
| [deleted]
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I don't really see the point of this article, it's well known
| bankruptcies stay on your credit report for 10 years.
|
| With the recent rent moratoriums, I expect landlords to get even
| harsher. A tenant can easily pay rent two or three times, and
| then stretch out the eviction proceedings for 6 to 18 months
| depending on the state .
|
| If this person went and filed for a second bankruptcy, they could
| then delay the eviction by years.
|
| The bigger issue of course is we haven't built up enough new
| housing over the last 40 years, you want there to be so much
| available housing landlords can't be selective. They have to take
| the risk of losing a bit of money, because they're going to lose
| an absolute ton if they let their units remain vacant.
| causality0 wrote:
| _A tenant can easily pay rent two or three times, and then
| stretch out the eviction proceedings for 6 to 18 months
| depending on the state ._
|
| Wow that's insane. If I was renting out a property I owned I'd
| expect to be able to throw someone out within a day after an
| active refusal to pay rent.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| There are 1.5 million housing units under construction, which
| is an all-time record. It'll be interesting to see how quickly
| that get absorbed in a market with rising interest rates and
| questionable valuations. There appears to be lots of demand but
| what I'm seeing in my corner of the world is most of the demand
| is at the lower end of the market, which I'm guessing isn't
| what is primarily being developed. People moving up does free
| up properties at lower ends of the market, so in effect, a
| trickledown effect, but that takes a while to happen. Maybe
| we're going to see more and more house sharing and renting of
| individual rooms (legal or not).
| Kye wrote:
| How many of these will be snatched up by scalpers looking to
| rent them out? It doesn't matter if they build 1.5 million
| houses if they all end up as rentals anyway.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Housing bought by landlords looking to rent is the most
| relevent, as it increases competition among landlords
| putting pressure on them to be less selective.
| Isthatablackgsd wrote:
| How many of them are starter homes? Majority of the home
| constructions I came across is always above 3.5k sqft homes,
| some are McManison. It is great about 1.5 million housing
| units, we need starter houses than 4k sqft homes.
| brimble wrote:
| Few new starter homes in my (non-trendy) city. However,
| once builders started working again around '12, they
| started putting up both McMansions and spectacularly ugly
| apartment buildings (partially fills the role of the
| starter home, I guess, in that at least it's a place to
| live, if not a stepping stone to financial stability, so
| should take pressure off the market) at a crazy-fast pace.
| Construction everywhere, constantly. Downtown? New several
| new or converted high-rise apartment buildings. Just off
| downtown? Tons of new ugly-ass mid-rise apartment buildings
| in that new style everyone's using. 'Burbs? New and
| developing McMansion-filled neighborhoods everywhere, and a
| ton more of those same ugly apartment buildings.
|
| Doesn't seem to have done much to keep housing prices under
| control, and houses still sell so fast that you blink and a
| new listing will be gone. We can't possibly be a major
| location for internal migration--not like cities in
| California or Texas or anything of that sort--so IDK what's
| up with that. My 20ish year old McMansion has increased in
| value about 30% over the last two years, and was already
| way up from just a few years earlier. WTF.
| lyaa wrote:
| The ugly apartment buildings you are seeing are probably
| one-plus-five buildings (one concrete + five wood floors)
| that are actually optimized for balancing
| zoning+codes+affordability for single-family apartments.
| At least theoretically, they should offer cheaper rent
| due to their much lower construction costs.
|
| I think of the ugliness of the facades as a bonus that
| would drive wealthier people to other buildings once
| options open up a bit.
| brimble wrote:
| Yeah, it's those, I just couldn't recall the term for it.
| Much of the ugliness seems to be a choice, though--lots
| of weird, haphazard nooks and crannies and bump-outs, and
| bizarre color schemes that seem designed to dazzle you
| into not noticing how ugly the unevenly-bumpy exterior
| is. If they just flattened out the exterior walls a
| little and cooled it a bit with the crayon-box color
| scheme, they'd look much better.
| letouj wrote:
| In many cases, the superfluous nooks and crannies on
| 5-over-1's are mandated by local zoning rules that call
| for "facade articulation" on buildings occupying larger
| amounts of street frontage (I suppose to conceal the
| unthinkable horror of a big building existing in a city).
|
| See e.g. Portland, Oregon's facade articulation
| guidelines: https://www.portland.gov/sites/default/files/
| 2020/lu_buildin...
| Gigachad wrote:
| The people buying the McMansions likely move out of their
| existing home, freeing it up for people looking for a
| starter place
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Moving McRichPeople out of normal housing and into
| McMansions can open up housing availability downstream
| though. The homes they are moving out of are an upgrade for
| those in starter homes and then those starter homes become
| available.
| notch656a wrote:
| Agreed, although it may be the case that many McRich are
| buying additional housing rather than trading one house
| for another.
| mikem170 wrote:
| Or replacing small houses with bigger ones...
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| At least in the upstate of SC, I see lots of starter homes,
| some would say too many. Of course, the average price in
| the state has risen above $300K and I don't know where
| people are getting this money from. The starter
| homes/condos seem to have a sqft of between 1200->2000
| (best guess unresearched).
| incahoots wrote:
| I'm in the upper midwest, from what I've seen when
| traveling in my state it's few and far between. New
| construction is all MDUs and custom homes in the 5k sqft
| range.
|
| Fed/State government can issues credits/tax relief for
| "investors" who build MDUs but somehow starter homes are
| off the table?
|
| It's not all doom and gloom, Habitat For Humanity appears
| to be the only outfit that's building affordable
| houses/starter homes, helps when you get a nice influx of
| money going into that program (thanks MacKenzie Scott).
| notch656a wrote:
| I think a lot of the supply at the low end is irreplaceable,
| because building codes and regulations have changed
| significantly over the years. It's effectively illegal to
| build some of the more affordable buildings in certain
| jurisdictions.
| KevinGlass wrote:
| This is true. I'd estimate at least 70% of all rental unit
| currently under construction will not be "affordable" for
| two people working full time for minimum wage. In northern
| New England it's easily 100% of units.
|
| That said all rental projects that I know of in Maine and
| New Hampshire are all rented before they even finish
| construction.
|
| EDIT: I'd also like to make a point about current
| regulation and zoning. It's not unusual for a developer to
| pay around $500,000 or more in state fees, environmental
| review, and layer time to get a new apartment complex
| approved. This requires insider connections and specialized
| knowledge of the municipality if you want it completed in a
| reasonable time frame. Partially this is because national
| building codes are more complicated then ever but more
| often building anything at all requires a zoning exception
| or amendment.
|
| If you pull of the zoning maps for your town or city you'll
| likely find it riddled with parcels that have been cut out
| or otherwise exempted from the rest of the zone. This
| process can be expensive and take years to complete.
| [deleted]
| otterley wrote:
| According to architects who know, it's the price of
| mandatory parking, especially in MDUs, that drives up the
| cost of housing much more than the additional cost of
| adhering to more stringent building codes.
|
| See, e.g., https://www.accessmagazine.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/7/20...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Around these parts, these new housing units are _insanely_
| expensive. They are building a lot of them, but there 's no
| altruism involved. Not even one tiny bit. They are building
| these gigantic highrises, that are destined to be packed with
| yuppies. There are cranes everywhere in NYC.
|
| Brooklyn and Queens; formerly "affordable" places to live in
| New York, are now getting $4,000 (or more)/mo for 1-bedroom
| cribs. I've seen it with my own eyes, in Manhattan. Areas
| like Alphabet City, that used to be considered "dangerous,"
| are now primo real estate, and well-dressed young couples
| walk their toy poodles around these neighborhoods.
|
| It's only a matter of time, before NYC becomes an East Coast
| San Francisco. Manhattan is pretty much there.
|
| I am not personally familiar with the way France is
| structured, but I have been told that the cities are where
| the wealthy live, and the suburbs are where the not-wealthy
| live.
|
| From what I have seen, Seattle is becoming that way. I was
| pretty surprised, when I visited some friends, down in the
| suburbs south of Seattle, and saw that it was actually a
| rather scruffy area. I had gotten used to Bellevue and
| Redmond.
| couchand wrote:
| > They are building these gigantic highrises, that are
| destined to be packed with yuppies.
|
| Unless there have been major changes in the last few years,
| many of those buildings will not, in fact, be filled with
| yuppies. They'll sit vacant, parking the money of the
| world's ultrarich in a low-tax investment.
| mynameishere wrote:
| _Areas like Alphabet City, that used to be considered
| "dangerous," are now primo real estate, and well-dressed
| young couples walk their toy poodles around these
| neighborhoods._
|
| How awful. The government should do something about this
| kind of degradation.
| [deleted]
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| I lived in exactly that in Liberty Village in Toronto for a
| period. "Lulu's and Shitzu's" it was often called. How
| right they were.
|
| New rental-only builds were even going up in the area, not
| just condos. But they were more expensive to rent than the
| bloody condos, and about 3/4 the size.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Supply is supply. Unless they are tearing down older units,
| new expensive apartments should make the older, less trendy
| units cheaper.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| You mean the ones they knock down, to make room for the
| highrises?
|
| Supply is supply, and there's only so much real estate in
| NYC.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If you knock down 300 units to make 800, that's still
| going to improve things.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| For investors from China, yes. For locals, not so much.
| otterley wrote:
| There are still a whole lot of brownstones waiting to be
| bulldozed!
| imbnwa wrote:
| >I am not personally familiar with the way France is
| structured, but I have been told that the cities are where
| the wealthy live, and the suburbs are where the not-wealthy
| live.
|
| I hear Italy is the same way. Source: Gomorrah
| dylan604 wrote:
| How many of these new construction numbers ignore the number
| of existing units taken "offline" in order to make way for
| this new construction?
| EricE wrote:
| Remind me - how many people are streaming across the boarder
| each month? And those are just the ones we know about.
|
| Want to talk about trickle down effects!
| jeffbee wrote:
| The all-time record for housing under construction is far
| from a positive indicator. It is caused by taking longer to
| complete them.
| notch656a wrote:
| Yep, easy come easy go. The quickest way to get landlords to
| become less selective would be to let them toss freeloaders on
| their ass on day one of delinquency.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| That would very quickly escalate the already very bad
| homelessness crisis in many parts of the country. Some levels
| of tenant protection are a way society can help their
| citizens get back on feet after a difficult time, which
| almost every person will encounter. Freeloaders will
| eventually get kicked out.
| endisneigh wrote:
| It's a complicated issue - my anecdote is that any risk
| will ultimately be manifested in the form of more
| selectivity on the landlords end.
| notch656a wrote:
| I'd argue the effect may be the opposite. Tenant
| protections lead to homelessness by forcing landlords to be
| selective against vulnerable peoples, making it harder to
| get back on their feet after difficult times. Risk in
| renting to these people is greatly reduced if you can toss
| them out as soon as they stop paying.
| otterley wrote:
| Either way, you're making _someone_ homeless, which is an
| intractable problem as long as the housing demand exceeds
| supply. The only change being made is the criteria for
| who gets to suffer.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Penalizing every innocent potential renter who's _more
| likely_ to default on a lease is worse than only
| penalizing renters who actually do.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Which would result in more improper evictions. As it is we
| have already seen multiple examples of landlords losing
| checks so they can evict and rent to someone else at a higher
| rate.
|
| I've wondered about taking a different approach: The landlord
| is free to evict on the day of delinquency, but must move the
| possessions to a storage facility (paying a month's rent at
| that time) and they must post a substantial bond. If the
| tenant shows the eviction was improper they get the bond +
| costs. (And I would apply the same thing to foreclosures.)
|
| Instead of a long process of showing that they are acting
| properly they are putting up a substantial financial promise
| that they are acting properly. Make improper actions a costly
| mistake and there will be few of them.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| How would that process help in the "lost check" scenario
| you mention?
| jfk13 wrote:
| Somewhat of an aside, but as a non-American, I find it
| quite weird that it seems to be common to pay rent with a
| monthly check. Every place I've rented, I've paid
| automatically by standing order. (Oh, except in a couple
| of third-world countries, where cash was the norm.)
| MaysonL wrote:
| The building I live in has an online payment option, but
| the only payment option that the organization doing the
| collection takes is PayPal. Fuck PayPal, I can go to the
| bank and get a check (I haven't personally written a
| check for decades).
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > The quickest way to get landlords to become less selective
| would be to let them toss freeloaders on their ass on day one
| of delinquency.
|
| The quickest way to get landlords to become less selective is
| to say "any vacant apartment/home not occupied by at least
| one fulltime resident can be claimed by someone homeless as
| of [date]." You'd have landlords begging people to sign
| leases (and people would because then they would get a sure
| nice apartment as opposed to a lottery for one of the few
| ones left).
|
| Now, that produces bad other results, but so does allowing
| people's homes to be ripped away from them at a moments
| notice.
| notch656a wrote:
| >Now, that produces bad other results, but so does allowing
| people's homes to be ripped away from them at a moments
| notice.
|
| What an entitled viewpoint. It's not their home; an
| entirely different person owns it and they failed to hold
| up to their end of the contract for the terms under which
| the owner agreed to let them occupy it. The person having
| their home ripped away at a moment's notice is the
| landlord.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _quickest way to get landlords to become less selective
| is to say "any vacant apartment/home not occupied by at
| least one fulltime resident can be claimed by someone
| homeless as of [date]."_
|
| This is basically extreme squatter's rights. Places which
| have those produce some combination of people paying
| guards, those who can't afford guards taking matters into
| their own hands, people demolishing perfectly-good housing
| to avoid risking the land, _et cetera_.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| I actually meant via a lottery system, not armed
| competition. Paying the guards when the city says someone
| else gets the house is not a real thing. And demolishing
| housing could be fixed by going off zoning.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _via a lottery system, not armed competition_
|
| You're proposing to reassign millions of dollars of
| property based on various levels of evidence for whether
| someone was physically present? That's basically the 90s
| in Russia.
|
| It's certainly a neat fictional universe. I imagine
| everyone who can afford to would live in a hotel, leaving
| the scramble of defending your property to those who
| can't. Also, fraud. Lots of fraud.
| rdtwo wrote:
| This would just cause rental terms to require tenants to
| find a replacement before moving out
| HWR_14 wrote:
| That would probably be one of the terms. Which meets the
| stated goal of ensuring the housing is being used.
|
| Although I don't see how that clause would be
| enforceable. A tenant almost certainly doesn't have
| enough assets to go after to make up for a building.
| Otherwise they could have bought the home for their own
| use.
| vkou wrote:
| If you're looking to increase the number of temporarily
| homeless people, this sounds like a great approach.
|
| Unfortunately, temporarily homeless people have a habit of
| turning into chronic homeless people. And living in a city
| that's full of chronic homeless people, I don't think we need
| more.
|
| Your comfort and convenience as a landlord does not rank
| higher than my desire to not step over human shit on my way
| to work.
| notch656a wrote:
| Raising regulatory barriers increases cost of housing.
| Increased cost of housing disproportionately effects those
| who have less money. Eviction protections are incredibly
| harmful to homeless as it makes it can make it risky
| (costly) to rent to homeless, taking housing even further
| out of reach. Homeless become even less competitive
| renters.
|
| Your comfort and convenience to have the option not to pay
| a landlord does not rank higher than the desire of homeless
| to have better access to housing. Places with homeless
| problems badly need to remove these protections from
| renters.
| danso wrote:
| The article isn't just about bankruptcies. It's about a tenant
| scoring system that has as much power over your life as the
| credit scoring system, albeit with far less regulation and
| consumer protections:
|
| > _Tenant screening companies compile information beyond what's
| in renters' credit reports, including criminal and eviction
| filings. They say this data helps give landlords a better idea
| of who will pay on time and who will be a good tenant. The
| firms typically assign applicants scores or provide landlords a
| yes-or-no recommendation._
|
| > _A ProPublica review found that such ratings have come to
| serve as shadow credit scores for renters. But compared to
| credit reporting, tenant screening is less regulated and offers
| fewer consumer protections -- which can have dire consequences
| for applicants trying to secure housing._
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Selecting tenants is a legal minefield. As a result, many
| landlords find it safer to offload that decision to a third
| party. It sounds like these third-party rating services,
| including their "rent, don't rent" decisions, are filling a
| need but are ahead of legislation to curb some of their
| excesses.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Most leases are written for 12 months. There is AFAIK no
| evicition protection once the lease expires, or am I wrong? It
| seems to me that 12 months is the limit of the landlord's risk.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Landlord/tenet law is highly location dependent.
|
| Around here (Maryland), landlords are required to offer
| leases up to 2 years (this might be a county law), although I
| suspect 12 month leases are still common.
|
| At the end of a lease, MD law requires the lease to default
| into a month-to-month lease. To kick a tenent out without
| cause, a landlord need only provide 30 days notice.
|
| However, if the tenent refuses to vacate, the landlord still
| needs to go through the eviction process.
| xyst wrote:
| one of these days, we are going to look back on the absurdity of
| this current system. Just like we looked back on slavery.
|
| Very basic housing should be free. Single payer healthcare should
| be the standard. Basic income should be provided. As we move
| towards a more automated society, there are going to be a ton of
| angry unemployed people with nothing to do but focus their anger
| on something else.
| lolsal wrote:
| > Very basic housing should be free.
|
| Please publish where you have developed and built all this free
| housing so that everyone that wants to live there can enjoy
| this right.
| tacLog wrote:
| I mean your are assuming that with free housing you retain a
| right to live where you want to live.
|
| I am NOT saying we should build this free housing in one area
| and stick people there: (see the maybe failed public housing
| attempts) But there are more options available than everyone
| getting free housing in the bay area, CA.
| trasz wrote:
| It's called social housing and is available in many
| countries, such as UK. It's often not literally free, but
| several times cheaper than market prices.
| Not_John wrote:
| The Headline is in Germany with the "Schufa" literally already
| the case. What makes it worse, is that you cant even open a
| Bankaccount with a bad Score.
| dgellow wrote:
| Yeah, the Schufa is really a horrible system.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schufa
|
| It's proprietary, cost money, is almost impossible to avoid if
| you want to rent an apartment in Germany. And they have been
| found to have A LOT of incomplete, outdated, or wrong data.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Is there some CCPA-style remedy where you can get every piece of
| information that went into your score?
| legitster wrote:
| > experts warn that algorithms could introduce racial or other
| illegal biases
|
| There was literally no expert quoted in the article who asserted
| such a thing.
|
| > "It's kind of chaos," said Ariel Nelson, a staff attorney at
| the National Consumer Law Center. "It's really hard to figure out
| if you were rejected, why was it rejected. If it's something you
| can fix or if it's an error."
|
| The rightful criticism is that these systems are opaque and
| Kafkaesque. One of the _few benefits_ of them is that they are
| going to be less biased than human review. But I guess it 's too
| boring to assert that something is just generally unfair when you
| can lazily shoehorn in that it must be racist.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| When you put machine learning into the picture sometimes the
| computer learns things you didn't intend it to. (For example,
| the presence of a ruler is a sign of skin cancer.) Much
| evidence of "racism" in this country is actually socioeconomic,
| but the computer is even more vulnerable than a human to
| drawing the false conclusion that race is relevant.
| omegalulw wrote:
| >> experts warn that algorithms could introduce racial or other
| illegal biases
|
| > There was literally no expert quoted in the article who
| asserted such a thing.
|
| This is exceedingly harsh. Look at regulation on the credit
| card industry on what data you can and cannot use to make
| credit decisions. Algorithms can certainly have bias - that's
| not a disputed fact - and without careful screening of the data
| and the models you will quite likely have biases. So the
| article isn't unfair in making that statement.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| Algorithms have bias', sure.
|
| (1) Do they have more or less bias than the humans performing
| the current review process?
|
| (2) Is there a way to make their decision making process less
| opaque than it is now, to reduce the level of bias in their
| decision making process? - I know there has been some work
| done in this area (a) though it isn't as fast as many would
| like to see.
|
| (a)
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-020-00276-4
| erehweb wrote:
| There's well-known problems with algorithms introducing racial
| biases, and renting notably has a number of problems with these
| already. Calling this out is not a stretch.
| notch656a wrote:
| The racist angle was introduced because it's the only plausible
| nexus by which this practice could be illegal.
| matwood wrote:
| > One of the few benefits of them is that they are going to be
| less biased than human review.
|
| This isn't necessarily true. The factors used to drive the
| algorithms are selected by humans. And from those factors it's
| not always clear if they end up discriminatory. This is exactly
| why the systems remain opaque.
| BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 wrote:
| The ideal tenant candidate already owns a house and doesn't need
| to rent.
|
| Having been both landlord and tenant at various stages of my
| life, my first law of landlording is that trouble from tenants
| varies inversely with the square of the rent.
| paulsutter wrote:
| Higher-end properties will have fewer problems. However a too-
| high rent for a given property also means more trouble.
|
| This is similar to the observation that larger species live
| longer, but larger individuals of a given species live shorter
| lives.
| drBonkers wrote:
| tenant_trouble [?] 1/rent2
| Spooky23 wrote:
| But... you want those trouble free tenants, you need to do your
| job. Which is a problem for many landlords.
|
| The guy who rents the house next door to mine decided that lawn
| care was too much work, so he spread and wet leaves for the
| express purpose of killing the lawn. Winter is over and he is
| now surprised that his surgeon tenant doesn't want to live in a
| house that appears derlict.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| Yes, but if you're a landlord and you really want to make a
| higher return on your rental property, you have to delve into
| the depths of renting to "trouble tenants" because the property
| price to rent ratio is much better.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| Annoying "well actually" counterexample: my rent hasn't kept up
| with inflation, and I'm doing everything possible to avoid
| coming to the notice of my landlord. A call about a leaky
| faucet could cost me an additional six thousand dollars a year.
| KeepFlying wrote:
| You've described my situation too, though it's not a rent
| increase I'm worried about, it's the installation of a
| mandatory smart lock that I've somehow avoided for a few
| months now.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| This isn't healthy in any relationship.
|
| Eventually you're going to want or need to move, and the
| landlord is going to be pissed to discover on move-out
| inspection that you haven't been keeping them apprised of the
| condition of the property.
|
| A simple "hey, this happened; I'm not worried about it if
| you're not" email suffices.
| asdff wrote:
| This is why I'm thankful for my rent controlled apartment. No
| surprises down the road at all with rent increases being
| capped to something reasonable; as long as I continue holding
| a job I can pretty much always afford this apartment.
| Otherwise, rents could surge past what I could afford any
| day, as wages rarely keep pace with rents.
| lostgame wrote:
| It should obviously be illegal - preferably criminal - to check a
| credit score for a place to live, anyway - because a credit
| score, probably at least half the time - has little to no impact
| on how reliable of an individual you are financially.
|
| I live in Canada, where health care is covered, but dental isn't.
| I had an injury several years ago which effectively destroyed
| many of my teeth, and ended up more than $15,000 into debt over
| it. I couldn't make my payments on time for probably a couple
| years, and even though I finally managed to pay it off, it's a
| black spot on my credit history for years to come - through
| absolutely no fault of my own.
|
| This is _infinitely_ worse in the USA, where the pathetic
| government that promises 'freedom' somehow doesn't get that
| universal health care is a huge part of that.
|
| I have family in the USA who got cancer.
|
| Due to the absolutely bullshit health care system there, they are
| completely, utterly, financially devastated.
|
| This family member had to be stopped from _committing suicide_
| when they found out just how much it would cost to save their
| life. That they would have to declare bankruptcy. That their
| credit score, and anything they 'd ever need to do with money in
| the rest of their life - was completely gone.
|
| It's literally why I don't live in the USA anymore. Scared me
| shitless.
|
| You know what's way - _way_ worse than getting cancer?
|
| Having to pay more than you could ever possibly afford for
| getting cancer.
|
| Good luck getting a house after that, thanks to this bullshit.
|
| According to credit scores - you should be held _personally
| responsible_ for the fact that you got that disease.
|
| Literally - how _dare_ you get cancer. Enjoy having a shit credit
| score for the rest of however long you have to live.
|
| The fact is - people need places to live, and if people have poor
| credit - especially if it's of no fault of their own, but due to
| the bullshit system we live in that has no room for genuine
| accidents - how the hell are these people ever supposed to find a
| place to live?
|
| I had to go out of my way - and pretty much pay extra - to find a
| landlady here in Toronto even willing to give me enough
| understanding to rent a place - and I make about $100k CDN a
| year.
|
| I had to explain the whole situation, come up with _documents to
| prove_ that's what actually happened, and even then I was lucky
| to get a place to rent. I can't _imagine_ what it's like for
| people who might have half or less of my income and poor credit
| through no fault of their own but are looking for a place to
| live.
|
| _Fuck_ the credit score system. It is an abhorrent human rights
| issue - is simply disgusting and disturbing - and only serves the
| rich.
|
| A credit score does not take into account for humanness.
|
| It's the nuke of weaponized capitalism, yet another tool to keep
| the rich more rich and the poor more poor.
|
| May the greedy miscreants who developed and enforce this wicked
| system rot in a special kind of hell.
| [deleted]
| otterley wrote:
| Contrary to your initial assertion, credit scores are built
| using real-world models based on historical data that indicate
| a debtor's likelihood of repaying debts. Fair, Isaac, and Co.
| (aka FICO) pioneered this technique in the 1960s; one founder
| was a mathematician and the other an engineer. This score
| helped creditors make more accurate decisions based on real
| data; before that, credit decisions were usually made by
| individual loan officers whose decisions were often based on
| how well they knew you personally and your standing in the
| community (and were frequently racist, often overly so).
|
| Is the credit score system imperfect? Yes. Is it based on a
| mountain of bullshit? No.
|
| (That said, I'm really sorry to hear about the tragedies that
| have impacted you and your family. I don't think it's fair that
| we don't collectively insure one another for accidents,
| either.)
| parkingrift wrote:
| >Dunn said some of the scoring models he's seen while litigating
| cases on behalf of tenants are crude, giving so much weight to
| factors like eviction, criminal history or debt that a person
| whose record includes even one of those things would get a
| negative recommendation.
|
| I agree with the issues of transparency, but not with the models
| themselves. I absolutely would not rent property to someone who
| has a recent criminal record, a recent eviction, or a risky
| credit profile.
|
| Tough eviction laws make it too risky to select the wrong tenant.
| It could take months to remove a non-paying tenant in some
| cities.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Don't forget we now have to "price in" occasional years long
| eviction moratoriums.
| tacLog wrote:
| Do you think this tool will be used again for less urgent
| issues than Covid was?
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I'm not sure how to answer your question because it seems
| obvious to me that Covid was not the cause of the
| moratoriums.
| incahoots wrote:
| >I absolutely would not rent property to someone who has a
| recent criminal record
|
| This include ANY record, or just the violent ones? Curious how
| you would interpret a "disorderly conduct" charge/conviction,
| considering it's an umbrella term used by police to slap on any
| individual they deem difficult.
|
| For example, I had a conviction of disorderly conduct which
| resulted in a fine. All because I refused to ID myself to a LEO
| that demanded I comply even though I was under no suspicion of
| a crime or that I was about to commit one. Additionally I do
| not reside in a stop & identify state.
|
| How would you interpret that if I were to submit a rental
| application and my other prerequisites were in line (mid tier
| job, mid 700 credit score)?
| parkingrift wrote:
| I don't have any property to rent so it's purely
| hypothetical, but I would only be concerned with violent
| crimes, vandalism, or theft.
| prirun wrote:
| My auto+homeowner insurance recently increased because they said
| my _credit_ score was lower this renewal. I pay my auto insurance
| for the whole year in advance, so why do they give a shit what my
| credit score is?
|
| It's just another gimmick excuse to charge more money. I'm
| guessing the excuse is necessary to bypass insurance regulations
| or something.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Given the risk-taking activities of the poor vs. the rich, I
| don't doubt that some actuarial table shows that lower credit
| scores correlate with high risk profiles for liability
| insurance. Whether or not that's moral is another matter.
| jvdvegt wrote:
| TIL credit score is a real thing in a Western country - I always
| figured it was some thing hypothetical. Looks scarily too
| familiar to the Social score from some Black Mirror episode, or
| the alleged Chinese system if you ask me.
| tacLog wrote:
| As someone from a Western country, what replaces it?
|
| How do you buy a car on a loan for example?
|
| It's not perfect but unlike both your examples it isn't based
| on things that could be consider political. You can't lower
| your credit score by attending a protest for example. Or
| posting things for or against causes on the internet.
|
| I am just honestly wondering what else is our there? It has
| always seemed like a tool that can be used by both individuals
| and lenders.
| asdff wrote:
| It's basically your uber rider rating but in terms of debts and
| shared with banks and other financial agencies.
| mynameishere wrote:
| In the old days, if you wanted a mortgage, you and the wife put
| on your Sunday best and went down to talk to the banker in
| person. If he didn't already know you, he'd grill you. You
| better have a good job and a good reputation, mister. Should
| have thought ahead and got yourself some good standing in the
| Rotary Club or Elks. Have you been seen in church lately? Etc,
| etc. Credit scores replaced all that crap.
| jfk13 wrote:
| We get regular HN threads about "company X auto-terminated my
| account and there's no way to get a human involved". Is that
| really a better way to run society?
|
| Maybe local bank managers having connections to the local
| community, and actually knowing their customers, rather than
| sitting behind opaque algorithms and data brokers, wasn't
| entirely a bad thing after all.
| asdff wrote:
| No they haven't. Rent an apartment. You need paystubs to
| prove your income. You need two references to vouch for your
| moral character or whatever references are supposed to do for
| a landlord. You have to throw down a security deposit equal
| to x months rent. Then you also get that credit check hit.
| The credit check is saving you from none of that crap, it is
| just more crap on top of all that other crap that hasn't gone
| anywhere.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Regular credit scores existing isn't dystopian at all (though
| there are some issues with exactly how they're implemented). In
| principle, they're just a formalization of the concept that if
| you've broken promises to pay people in the past, they're less
| likely to trust you to keep your promises going forward.
| thrashh wrote:
| If anything, we just need mandated personal finance classes
| in high school since not everyone has parents/family to teach
| them.
|
| It would go a long way.
| trasz wrote:
| It's pretty much exactly like the one in China, if you compare
| facts and not just propaganda about both.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Another problem that only exists due to lack of competition.
| Landlords hold the upper hand and can afford to be picky. We
| could collectively decide to solve this, but probably will not.
| EricE wrote:
| Want to know how to never have to deal with a landlord? Own
| your own property!
|
| Also if you are concerned about affordable housing, I hope you
| paid attention to the line in the article that talked about big
| business moving into the rental scene buying up properties and
| charging more for rent than mom and pop landlords. Want to know
| what caused the largest shift of property ownership from small
| landlords to big conglomerates? All the COVID evection
| restrictions. We will be dealing with the fallout of the mass
| wealth theft/consolidation from COVID restrictions for decades
| to come.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Want to know how to never have to deal with a landlord? Own
| your own property!
|
| I feel sympathetic with the folks who are trying to buy into
| the housing market now. I could not reasonably afford my own
| house if I were buying it today, and I make pretty good
| money. There will be a reckoning at some point, this
| obviously cannot continue indefinitely.
|
| > We will be dealing with the fallout of the mass wealth
| theft/consolidation from COVID restrictions for decades to
| come.
|
| Yet another example of the road to hell being paved with good
| intentions. "Seemed like a good idea at the time!"
| vlunkr wrote:
| Fortunately "Landlords" is not a single entity, so there
| absolutely is competition.
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