D.C.’s Attorney General is touting a deal with one of the biggest online apartment rental platforms that aims to make it harder for landlords to discriminate against those who use public assistance to pay their rent.
Attorney General Karl Racine said the CoStar Group, which owns Apartments.com and other similar websites, has agreed to start filtering out postings that use terms like “no section 8” and “no vouchers” in its listings.
In addition, CoStar will manually review ads to help catch discriminatory postings that make it past the initial filters.
In a statement, Racine said for the last three weeks, not a single discriminatory ad has been directly posted on the Apartments.com platform as a result of these changes.
The agreement was reached between D.C. and CoStar, but the enhanced filters will be applied across the country.
It is against the law in D.C. to discriminate against someone based on where their housing income comes from, though in Racine’s statement, the AG’s office said it is still believed that about 15% of the city’s landlords refuse to accept the vouchers.
CoStar’s platform of apartment sites features information on over a million apartments around the country.
