The city of San Jose is hoping to launch a watchdog program for reporting housing discrimination against tenants with help from the public.
After launching an application for an "efficient, automated solution to increase the detection and reporting of property owners that discriminate against housing voucher tenants for our housing analysts," the city is asking the public for ideas and possible programs that it can adopt to keep housing discrimination at bay in San Jose.
The city adopted an ordinance in August that protects tenants against discrimination from property owners who don't want to rent via a housing voucher. The ordinance took effect in late September and now the city wants to make sure the ordinance is properly enforced.
According to the website for the city's application for the program, "Property owners violating this ordinance (both knowingly and unknowingly) often do so by advertising through property postings on common rental platforms (Craigslist, Apartments.com, Zillow, etc.) that housing vouchers are not accepted.
"The City of San Jose Housing Department formerly had an employee manually searching rental platforms to get a small sample of properties violating this ordinance, commonly identifying hundreds per day," the website says. "Housing would then send (sometimes multiple times) direct mail to the property to notify the ordinance violation."
More information can be found here.
