How I legally got scammed for $250 by an upscale apartment complex

I heard or listened to an anecdote about how credit reporting would actually be a perfect application for ML, but ML companies are fearful of stepping into a minefield of "you can't do this" regulations.

If an algorithm found some correlation between your "credit worthiness" (however their proprietary IP chooses to define it) and race or color of skin (or some proxy of), then using that information would be (legally) discrimination, say most legal experts speculating on a hypothetical (but bound to happen eventually) case. The fact is, yes, ML could probably discover a bunch of novel correlations that increase effectiveness by 7.8%, but since we can't really describe what "model" or way of thinking about our world the deep neural net is using, it's too easy to build a racist and discriminatory credit report. Kinda like that microsoft twitter chatbot that had to be taken down because it was learning from (and repeating) the racist garbage that a bunch of trolls were feeding it. Point is, it's a minefield.

But it's going to happen. Someone's going to try it.

And that's what the dark side of these companies like CoreLogic is: when real people's life events are influenced by the outcome of these databases, what's a societally-acceptable error rate? And what mechanisms are in place to check it?

Not saying CoreLogic is using racist ML credit bots. Not even saying the problem here is racism. I'm saying we've decided to put rules in front of credit reporting companies because, even if it's unintentional, it can lead to outcomes we all decided "you know, we have these ideals we're trying to strive towards and this isn't it." You also don't need a conscious conspiracy to output a racistbot -- microsoft didn't set out to make one, they just didn't think to build in a troll filter.

So yeah, CoreLogic isn't scamming renters out of such small amounts, but they are benefitting from an environment that allows such scams to exist.

Put another way, if there was some pending legislation that would make it harder for these scams to work (eg CoreLogic being legally obligated to also publicly report how many inquiries an inquirer has made with CoreLogic for the purpose of this specific property), do you think CoreLogic would spend lobbying money protecting their interests and preventing this at the expense of the consumer? Of course they would, reporting regulations are a huge operating expense! (wait... aren't you a company specializing in reporting...?)

That's why the author made a few swipes at the less-regulated corner of the credit report industry.

If it isn't fed the information then it can't discriminate. The meat and potatoes of the issue seems to lie in the "some proxy of" clause. Is unknowingly using some proxy for race really discrimination though? I'd imagine several things could be used as this proxy to varying degrees, everything from income to criminal history.

I was looking for rentals last weekend in ATL , and i noticed the administrative fee too. I don't remember seeing it last time around (couple of years ago), which makes me wonder if it's a recent phenomenon. The adminstrative fee, usually $250 or so, was in addition to the application fee. This makes no sense. What are they charging this for ? I didn't ask if it's after the application is approved or before. I'm guessing that it's after, but it's still a straight up cash grab. Another shitty thing that stood out was some sort of mandatory comcast fees. That is $85 for Comcast's most basic package, which is much higher than the price on Comcast's website.

I help manage an apartment building.

There's always the chance there's something wrong on your reports. You should get your own credit reports directly from Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion; this will cost you $30-ish in CA. Make sure the reports include FICO scores, and don't settle for any non-fico nonsense (eg CreditKarma or any such competitors). For future applications, you may be able to re-use those reports for a month. It never hurts to ask.

As for us, our algorithm (at least in part to avoid illegal discrimination) is simple: we drop anyone with bad credit (maybe a small medical collection is ok, but nothing else), then sort by income descending.

The other possibility is you're giving off a difficult tenant vibe. It's hard to explain in words, but after a while, I think you get a sense of who's going to be a pita. So things like asking about apartment rules (eg no smoking, how many pets, etc) is fine; asking for exceptions to those rules can go either way. It really depends how you ask.

> I'd imagine several things could be used as this proxy to varying degrees, everything from income to criminal history

But I think you could also make a compelling argument that many of those things are accurate proxies primarily due to the legacy of more overt discrimination, and it would be difficult to impossible to disentangle that.