Racial Inequality in Rental Markets: How Algorithms Shape Rental Decisions

The use of tenant screening companies is becoming increasingly prevalent in the rental market, where professionalized landlords with large portfolios now rely on the algorithms provided by these companies to screen tenants. Drawing from a growing body of research that examine how discrimination in the housing market has become more subtle (yet nevertheless insidious) in form compared to the explicit discriminatory practices of the past, this paper explores how this technology changes how racial inequality is operationalized in the tenant screening processes. Preliminary findings from an online survey experiment suggest that explicit racial biases may decrease when tenant screening scores are provided. However, in reality, these algorithms are fed information that are highly correlated with race. It may be the case that the increasing use of these algorithms may shift how racial inequality is operationalized in rental markets, from explicit racial biases to an increased salience of structural racial inequality.