Consumer complaint received 2021-06-23
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports — Other personal consumer report
Issue: Problem with a company's investigation into an existing issue — Difficulty submitting a dispute or getting information about a dispute over the phone
Company: Experian Information Solutions Inc. (ME)

ISSUES : Widespread sloppy data collection by credit agencies Experian, XXXX, and XXXX  of court FILINGS for eviction as EVICTION DECREES and disseminating these records that knowingly harm all tenants who have not had such adjudication, or, as in my case, are victims of a landlord filing a retaliatory, illegal, and harassing eviction proceeding. 

Since a court filing of an eviction action is no more an adjudication than an arrest is a conviction, there is widespread abuse occurring in the field of renter background checks that must be addressed by this agency as soon as possible. This week I sent a similar letter to XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ' office. 

I am the Petitioner in NYS Housing, Preservation & Development Repair Case XXXX. In my case, the Respondent/landlord failed to honor a XX/XX/XXXX, court-ordered stipulation of settlement agreement to repair water-intrusions in the roof and walls of XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX. I have a 30-year rent stabilized lease whose legal rent is roughly 1/3 the going market rate and is protected NYS DHCR ( rent regulations ) and by the XXXX Commission on Human Rights. 

Respondents XXXX XXXX XXXX and their managing agent XXXX XXXX ( now d/b/a XXXX XXXX ) exhibited a long-standing pattern of tenant harassment and failure to repair dating as far back as at least to XX/XX/XXXX, a malfeasant behavior that continues to date. There are XXXX matters related to this : HPD Repair Case XXXX XXXX ( Steven Bard v Mautner-Glick Corporation and Jason Glick ) HPD Holdover Case HP LT-065437-2019 ( King Enterprises Ltd. v Steven Bard ) NYC Commission on Human Rights Verified Complaint MHAD-19-44959 ; and DHCR 2019-06-21 HR410080RV Lease Non-Renewal. 

The Respondents further refused to renew my lease that expired XX/XX/XXXX, threatened to file a retaliatory and harassing holdover eviction proceeding a day before the new law was enacted in XXXX, and after the lease expired filed the promised retaliatory and harassing holdover proceeding on XX/XX/XXXX. The filing was for " non-residency, '' an involuntary non-residency caused by their own malfeasant acts. This is an example of the landlord attempting to profit by the fruit of their crimes. 

Two years earlier, and as a consequence of my being denied use of my long-time New York home, I was forced from temporary hotel accommodations on XX/XX/XXXX, and left with no place to go. I retreated to the home of relatives in Maine. I am in Maine awaiting adjudication of NY housing matters. I sought temporary affordable rental housing in Maine before the XX/XX/XXXX sale of the temporary home where I resided for two years.

During this search, I was denied rental property housing by firms that conducted eviction background checks. Despite my credit rating above 800 and having never once miss a rent payment ... including paying rent for 2 years on a NY apartment that was humanly uninhabitable ... I was declined rents claiming that I had allegedly been evicted for non-payment. While this is far from the fact, it does not matter : this is how any reasonable person reading the report would interpret it. 

In the first case, a XXXX-inspired tenant screening agency reported that I had " an eviction case '' in NY and was thereby denied renting privileges. No further info needed, apparently. 

I investigated with XXXX, who had gathered the faulty data, and found that they knew that they were using faulty data collection but didn't care because, to them, anyone who had a landlord filing an eviction proceeding against them was obviously not someone another landlord would want to rent to ... no matter what the facts were or what the tenant might say. From the Big 3 credit rating bureaus, every tenant is suspect and every landlord uncorrupt and unimpeachable : pure classism, racism and plain bigotry. 

More disturbingly, while we can all agree that any tenant evicted for non-payment is a very poor credit risk to any other landlord, " eviction proceeding '' by itself does not mean " eviction judgement, '' yet that is what the Big 3 assume and the lies they spread through the credit checking community. 

My battle with XXXX  was only moderately successful : they purged my record from their database after I wrote to their CEO and complained of the many ethical breaches that their sloppy data collection practices caused. I wished that they had done more but I felt that I was off the hook ... WRONG. 

Last week I learned that another rent-checking agency using Experian data had the same faulty findings and also refused to do anything about it. I'm sure the same is true with XXXX  and all of the companies relying upon their data. 

This widespread eviction smearing of tenants across the entire credit reporting industry where filings equal adjudicated evictions must end. We wouldn't tolerate people being arrested being smeared as convicts. Neither should this fly here. 

Can the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau begin an investigation into these faulty, harmful data collection practices of eviction filings not just in New York State but in all states? These firms wield extraordinary power in the public sector and are causing real, permanent, and lasting harm to all but those tenants adjudicated as evicted for non-payment. Their obdurate, defiant, and discriminatory belief that they have the power to smear any tenant with any bad data they happen to gather is abhorrent. Stop the smearing. 

I am powerless to contact, confront, and argue with every firm as I did with XXXX. Many other similarly smeared tenants are far less likely than me to be aware of this issue and may not know who can help to rectify this injustice. The Big 3 need to choose : accurate data or a suit by the CFPB to outlaw the practice altogether.

Please join me in averting these additional injustices. I would be happy to turn over all court filings and correspondences with XXXX  and the NYS AG in this matter in order to aid an investigation. 

Sincerely, XXXX XXXX Temporary address XXXX XXXX XXXX, # XXXX XXXX, ME XXXX XXXX XXXX NY Apartment being disputed : XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX, # XXXX, XXXX XXXX, NY XXXX