BiasHigh
SafeRent AI Screening Tool Allegedly Discriminated Against Housing Voucher Applicants
- Occurred
- May 25, 2022
- Published
- Dec 14, 2024
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
SafeRent’s AI-powered tenant screening tool used credit history and non-rental-related debts to assign scores, disproportionately penalizing Black and Hispanic renters and those using housing vouchers. The reported discriminatory housing outcomes violated the Fair Housing Act and Massachusetts law. A class action lawsuit (Louis, et al. v. SafeRent Solutions, et al.) resulted in a $2.275 million settlement and changes to SafeRent’s practices.
Developers
- SafeRent Solutions
Deployers
- Landlords
Harmed parties
- Renters
- Monica Douglas
- Massachusetts renters
- Mary Louis
- Hispanic renters
- Black renters
Tags
- response
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: AI screening tool caused discriminatory housing outcomes leading to a class action lawsuit and settlement.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8