What the law says, in plain terms
- Everyone is equal before the law, and discrimination is prohibited.
- Refusing a service offered to the public · including housing · on grounds of race, ethnic origin or religion is a criminal offence.
- Discrimination based on gender is also unlawful.
- If software helps decide who gets a home, it has to be transparent and overseen by a person, and you have the right to a human review of an automated decision.
What discrimination looks like in practice
- Direct: rejecting applicants from a specific country, religion or family status
- Indirect: neutral-seeming criteria that end up excluding a protected group disproportionately
- Through ranking software: a model that quietly stands in for protected characteristics (postcode, name, language)
- Through questioning: asking questions that signal the criterion will be used
How to choose fairly
- Use objective criteria only · income, documents, fit to the listing, references · and write them down
- Keep a record of every decision with the inputs and the reason
- Make sure a person makes the final call, not the software alone
- Block prohibited filters before a listing goes live
- Be able to explain every score to the applicant
How aptari keeps it fair
aptari simply does not see protected characteristics when it ranks applicants. It looks only at income, documents, how well someone fits what the listing asks for, and references. When an agency creates a listing, aptari blocks unfair filters, and it keeps a clear record of the inputs and the final human decision behind every score.
What an agency risks by getting it wrong
- Claims for damages from rejected applicants
- Criminal prosecution in racial or religious cases
- Losing access to aptari for breaking the rules
- Reputational damage that spreads fast in tight local markets
See is AI tenant scoring legal and how to rank applicants fairly.