Sponsor
Maxwell Frost
Representative · D-FL
Representative · D-FL
The bill improves renter privacy and broadens housing access — particularly for low-income and minority tenants — by banning credit-based tenant screening, but shifts risk, costs, and administrative burdens onto housing providers and risks substitution to other screening methods that could undermine fairness.
Renters — especially low-income individuals and racial/ethnic minorities — will face fewer denials, reduced demands for higher security deposits, and improved housing access and stability because housing providers can no longer use credit-based consumer reports for tenant screening.
Consumers (renters) will have stronger credit privacy protections because housing providers are prohibited from obtaining credit-related consumer reports for tenancy decisions even with applicant consent.
Housing providers (including small landlords) lose a commonly used tool for assessing applicant financial risk, which may lead them to raise rents, impose stricter non-credit requirements, or otherwise shift costs onto tenants.
Applicants (renters) may face substitute screening practices — such as more frequent employment verification, criminal background checks, or other intrusive inquiries — that continue to burden applicants and could perpetuate fairness concerns.
Housing providers must create and manage new individualized reconsideration procedures and ensure compliance with the bill's definitions, generating additional administrative work, paperwork, and potential disputes.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Prohibits housing providers from using consumer credit reports or investigative reports containing creditworthiness information for tenant screening, with a narrow reconsideration exception.
Official title: To amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to prohibit the use of consumer credit checks against prospective and current tenants for the purposes of making adverse rental housing decisions.
Introduced July 14, 2025 by Maxwell Frost · Last progress July 14, 2025
Prohibits landlords and other housing providers from using consumer credit reports or investigative consumer reports to screen prospective or current tenants when those reports include information about creditworthiness, credit standing, or credit capacity. Allows an exception only when a report already provided to a housing provider is used solely to reconsider a previously denied rental application. The change is made by adding a new subsection to the Fair Credit Reporting Act that defines “tenant screening purposes” and “housing provider,” and otherwise bars procurement or use of consumer reports for rental decisions even if the consumer consents.