Tenant screening companies wage war on tenants with blacklists

Tenant screening companies wage war on tenants with blacklists

By Lynda Carson - December 25, 2019

Landlords want tenants to be helpless, docile, and are considered to be nothing more than “bags of money” that may be exploited any time, any place, for any reason, by any greedy landlord who believes that they have a license to steal when they get a permit to operate a rental unit, or rental property.

Tenant screening companies and landlords depend on Experian, Equinox, and TransUnion to get the information they depend on to be able to blacklist tenants all across the nation. Making matters worse, reportedly robots are taking over the tenant screening process for some companies, including HelloRented and RealPage, or TransUnion.

A list of campaign contributing Experian employees may be found by clicking here, and public records on each of these Experian employees may be found by clicking here.

A list of TransUnion campaign contributing employees is available here, and public records on each of these Experian employees may be found by clicking here.

Harvey Speak, executive chairman of Equinox, a tenant screening company, is a notorious Trump campaign contributor,

These companies and people are wheeling and dealing in peoples personal private information, especially tenants that are being blacklisted, and they are making big money in the process. It is a despicable business model that tramples upon the right to privacy for people all across the nation, and especially tenants.

Tenants in Oakland, California, and all across the nation are being blacklisted by the landlords, and the tenant screening companies who do the dirty work of the landlords to blacklist the tenants. The results of the blacklisting industry is to make it nearly impossible for tenants to find a landlord that is willing to accept them as renters, which often results in homelessness if the tenant and their family faces eviction.

Making matters worse, most landlords require tenants to pay the fee that the “tenant screening companies” charge, and tenants should unite and refuse to pay the landlords any type of fee that would be used to pay a “tenant screening company” that is blacklisting the tenants.

Often the landlords are using the local police departments to screen tenants for them, and often the cops target people that they want to remove from our communities for various reasons of one kind, or another.

Reportedly, some tenant screening companies often target migrants/immigrants, and black people. Some cities including Fairbault, Minnesota, have what are known as “crime free” housing laws that unfairly discriminate against many people, and use the cops to target those the landlords and business owners want to keep out of many communities. This is in addition to the draconian one-strike policies used by HUD to target people in federally subsidized housing projects including people smoking pot, which were bravely fought against by Anne Omura of the Eviction Defense Center in Oakland, and other pro-tenant attorneys at the time.

How Tenant BlacklistsAre Created:

Reportedly, “Courts around the country are selling their docket information, which includes the personal details about individuals contained in case filings. Often provided as a digital data feed from Courts directly to private companies, this docket information is being purchased by private data companies, debt collectors, and credit reporting agencies.

In the area of residential and tenant disputes, renters who are named in a Housing Court proceeding may end up on what is called a “tenant blacklist.” Specifically, private tenant screening companies and credit reporting agencies purchase personal information about renters involved in Housing Court cases.
Then, these credit reporting agencies compile the personal information in large “tenant blacklist” databases and sell special “rental credit reports” to landlords and property managers. When a renter submits an application, landlords can use these special renters credit reports to decide to accept or reject the renter. Landlords may also use renters credit reports to determine the price of rent.”

Tenant Screening Companies Should Be Forced Out Of Business:

One of the busy tenant screening companies that makes a living by blacklisting tenants is despicable enough to call itself TurnKey, and the definition of Turn-Key “is the keeper of the keys, in a prison.” Just try to imagine who these pricks are who pretend to be the turn-key, and believe that tenants should be treated as though they are in jail.

Another one of the very busy tenant screening companies that makes a fortune blacklisting the tenants for landlords that should be forced out of business by tenants who refuse to pay these blood suckers any money that keeps them blacklisted, is a company called My Rental. MyRental is owned by a despicable company called CoreLogic Rental Property Solutions.

Open Secrets reveals that CoreLogic gives most of their campaign contributions to Republicans, but that they also give plenty of money to the Democrats. Money that was ripped off of the tenants by greedy landlords wanting to blacklist the tenants, who in turn pay the money to CoreLogic for their tenant screening fees, and notorious activities.

Open Secrets reveals that a fellow named Stuart K. Pratt is the Treasurer of CoreLogic. The FEC has lists of campaign contributions made by Pratt.

Click here for a list of Pratt’s evil associates through the years and the image number for detailed info, including info on Patrick M. Ames of Oakland. Many others with Core Logic may be found by clicking here.

Some of the notorious capitalist pig Core Logic insights by Stuart Pratt may be found by clicking here.

Other Tenant Screening Companies:

Other tenant screening companies in the business of ripping off tenants and blacklisting tenants that the tenants should avoid and blacklist by refusing to pay to see if they have been blacklisted include RentPrep, SmartMove, Experian Screening Services, AppFolio, TurboTenant, Cozy, and the notorious National Tenant Network.

Mike Stout is listed as the principal for the National Tenant Network, for Southeast Texas, and Louisiana, and is known as the notorious screening guy.

The Tenant National Network has been repeatedly sued for offering erroneous consumer reports to its clients, and should be put out of business by tenants who refuse to pay any fees to landlords for tenant screening activities that result in blacklisting tenants. At times these battle are fought on many grounds and land before the U.S. Supreme Court, and in Connecticut in a landmark civil rights decision that established that consumer reporting agencies must comply with the Fair Housing Act.

In 2013, the FTC warned data brokers such as tenant screening companies that they may be subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

An example of one of the notorious forms of the National Tenant Network used by landlords for tenant screening activities may be found by clicking here.

RentPrep Tenant Screening Company:

RentPrep a West Seneca, New York, notorious tenant screening company, has a show on podcast for landlords, and in a recent RentPrep podcast Steve White, CEO of RentPrep, and Eric Worral are in a podcast that discusses how immigration reform is pushing to evict 108,000 immigrants.

Blacklisting & Boycotting The Tenant Screening Companies:

The best way to blacklist and boycott the tenant screening companies is for all tenants to unite and refuse to pay any fees to landlords for the purpose of renting an apartment or a house location, that may be used to pay any of the tenant screening companies that may be blacklisting them, their friends, or family members. As Abbey Hoffman used to say, F_ck The System.

Meanwhile, Oakland Mayor Libby Shaft, who resides in a large majestic warm fancy home valued at more than $1.5 million dollars, has recently unleashed the pigs this Christmas holiday on Housing Justice protesters in front of Oakland City Hall. Reportedly, Libby Schaft has unleashed the pigs against the people for daring to challenge Oakland’s never ending war against the homeless and the unhoused. People that may have been blacklisted by the same tenant screening companies mentioned above, who cannot find any housing as a result of being blacklisted.

Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com

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