The Connecticut Fair Housing Center and the National Housing Law Project have filed a new lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut contending that tenant screening company CoreLogic Rental Property Solutions violates the Fair Housing Act by disproportionately disqualifying African-American and Latino applicants from securing housing based on discriminatory use of criminal records as rental criteria.
The lawsuit, which may be the first of its kind, asserts that
CoreLogic unlawfully instructed a landlord to deny a Connecticut mother’s request to move her disabled son into her apartment due to a dismissed shoplifting arrest
from 2014. As a result, her son, whose disability left him unable to speak, walk, or care for himself, remained in a nursing home for a year longer than was necessary.
Although rental decisions have traditionally been made by housing providers, today many landlords contract with third-party tenant-screeners to make admission decisions for them. This litigation seeks to ensure that CoreLogic and all tenant-screening companies who functionally make rental decisions on behalf of landlords make those decisions in accordance with fair housing requirements.