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The Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana has released its newest report, “The State of Fair Housing in Indiana – No Way Home: Tenant Screening Barriers to Housing,” which documents the struggles and barriers for area residents in securing rental housing.
“Through interactions with FHCCI clients, fair housing testing, and review of area landlord policies, the FHCCI found that renters are frequently denied housing for incorrect information on their screening reports, such as mismatched names, expunged records being considered, and other misleading or distorted reports,” said Hafsa Razi, systemic investigations coordinator of the FHCCI, in a news release. “The process of obtaining a reason for denial is also difficult and burdensome for renters. Very often, renters do not know their rights, and housing providers frequently do not give them the information required under law.”
According to FHCCI, housing providers and tenant screening companies share responsibility for the approval or denial of rental applicants, with screening companies encouraging providers to rely on their recommendations but providers being the final decision makers.
However, both groups give potential renters and customers mixed messages on who is to blame for a decision.
According to FHCCI, screening decisions that rely on factors like bad credit, flawed rental history or criminal records to deny housing will inevitably have a harsher impact on individuals in protected classes under fair housing law — Black individuals, people with disabilities, immigrants, families with children, and survivors of domestic violence:
- Black, female renters, and families with children are acutely affected by eviction filings, especially in Marion County where the overall eviction rate is nearly 50% higher than the national rate. Because of a lack of tenant protections, local renters are especially vulnerable to retaliatory, threatening, and/or other unlawful protections, and have few legal resources to fight eviction disputes.
- Tenant screening services reportedly do not distinguish between eviction filings and actual eviction orders, and some local housing providers explicitly reject tenants based on filings alone. This means that tenants can be denied housing for years for situations where they were entirely blameless.
- Disparities in the criminal justice system mean that Black residents are disproportionately likely to have convictions on their records, due to higher exposure to policing and arrests, and lower likelihood of having cases dismissed or charges lowered. Domestic violence survivors and people with disabilities are also unfairly targeted by restrictions on renters with criminal histories.
- Local housing providers frequently adopt stringent criminal history policies that exceed their legitimate interest in ensuring tenant safety and reliability. These include blanket lifetime bans on renters with felonies and/or misdemeanors, bans for arrests or other non-guilty dispositions, lumping in minor offenses with “violent crimes,” and instituting bans for unreasonable long periods of time.
- Renters applying for housing also face heightened costs of entry in the Indianapolis market. AnFHCCI audit of recent fair housing tests of housing providers showed that the average application fee is $50 per adult. Renters with negative screening records apply and get denied over and over again, spending potentially hundreds of dollars on application fees, and months or years of time, to finally secure housing. Renters who do find housing are locked in by the prohibitive costs of moving — thousands of dollars on various fees and deposits — making them vulnerable to violations of their rights and unlivable conditions.
Despite clear racial disparities and the impact on domestic violence survivors, local housing providers in Indianapolis screen out tenants or charge higher costs based on raw credit scores, with some housing providers setting minimum credit scores as high as 650 or 700 for rent consideration.
Housing providers provide prospective renters with vague and confusing information about screening policies, usually requiring them to apply and pay fees before providing information specific to their situation.
Intentional discrimination by housing providers continues to occur, with FHCCI testing revealing an alarming number of instances of race-based discrimination against testers with negative tenant screening profiles.
The FHCCI has also heard reports of housing providers lying to renters with criminal backgrounds about availability or overriding the recommendation of the screening report to deny a renter.
“By making the housing search so difficult, even impossible, for renters with marks on their backgrounds, tenant screening barriers drive them into substandard housing and put them at risk of homelessness—again, unduly affecting Black renters, immigrants, families with children, people with disabilities, and domestic violence survivors,” said Amy Nelson, FHCCI’s executive director, in a news release.
To download the full report, visit the FHCCI’s News Page or the group’s Reports Page
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