Imagine a computer program that landlords across your city use to automatically raise rents in lockstep—no competition, no negotiation, just coordinated price hikes that you can't escape. You don't have to imagine it. It's already happening.

RealPage, Resman, TurboTenant, and other tech companies pass their tools off as “property management software” when in reality they are circumventing laws against rate fixing, driving up the cost of housing across the nation, and pricing Black families out of whole neighborhoods as a result.

Here is the Petition:

Nationwide, Black and Brown people are being priced out of the long-standing communities and neighborhoods they helped build by computer algorithms. 

Corporations like RealPage, ResMan, TurboTenant and others provide landlords with "property management software" to circumvent laws against rate fixing, coordinate rent hikes, and drive up the cost of housing across the nation, pricing Black families out of whole neighborhoods and contributing to gentrification and housing discrimination. When algorithms tell landlords across a neighborhood to raise rents simultaneously, Black families don't just face higher costs—they get priced out entirely. Families who have lived in communities for generations suddenly cannot afford to stay. Parents are forced farther from jobs and schools. Communities lose the stability needed to build wealth and political power. 

Whole communities are being displaced, not by natural market forces, but by coordinated digital collusion. This isn't innovation. It's exploitation with a nice interface.

While these algorithms have made housing unaffordable nationwide, Black families are bearing the brunt. Nearly 6 in 10 Black households rent their homes—more than double the rate of white households. Last year alone, 30.6% of Black households were "severely cost-burdened," spending more than half their income just to keep a roof over their heads. At a moment when Black political power is under attack, housing instability becomes yet another weapon. When families are constantly being pushed out, forced to move, or struggling just to survive skyrocketing rent, it becomes harder to organize, harder to vote, and harder to fight for our communities.

Renters across this country are fed up with watching corporations manipulate the housing market while politicians look the other way. We're fed up with algorithms designed to extract maximum profit from families who just need a place to live. And we're done letting tech companies circumvent price-fixing laws that have been on the books for decades. At a time when so many families are struggling with the affordability of housing, we need legislation that makes homes more affordable, not less. 

The End Rent Fixing Act is a common-sense piece of legislation that would make it unlawful for rental property owners to use algorithms that coordinate rental housing prices.  

Homes should be priced for people to live in them—not for algorithms to profit from them. Color Of Change and its members demand that Congress immediately take action to pass the End Rent Fixing Act before more Black families are pushed out of the communities they helped build!