Canada’s Competition Bureau is investigating the potential role artificial intelligence (AI) is playing in tracking and setting rental rates across the country.
“As soon as the renters in the country started, you know, doing some rent strikes, really pushing back, I started speaking to renters all across the country,” Bonita Zarrillo, MP for Port Moody-Coquitlam told Global News.
“And we heard about these algorithms softwares, YieldStar, and other softwares and they said that these softwares were capturing data about them and artificially allowing them to drive up rents.”
Last August, the U.S. Justice Department filed a suit against real estate company RealPage Inc., which owns YieldStar, accusing it of an illegal scheme that allows landlords to coordinate to hike rental prices.
The suit alleged the company was violating antitrust laws through its algorithm that landlords use to get recommended rental prices for millions of apartments across the country.
Zarrillo said those same companies are operating in Canada.
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She made a motion to have parliament look into this issue last fall but it did not pass the first reading.
The Competition Bureau said in a statement that details of the investigation must remain private. “The Bureau must conduct a thorough and complete examination of the facts regarding any issue before reaching any conclusion as to whether the Competition Act has been contravened,” the organization said.
“What I can say is that there’s personal data being collected,” Zarrillo said.
“So there’s personal data that’s being collected about your demographics, about your incomes, about the prices in certain buildings and neighbourhoods. So it’s just the ability to amalgamate all of that data to spit out the best tenants, the highest price. You can gain all of those things. And that’s why it needs to be investigated because it may be unfair business practices that are driving up rents and I suspect it is.”
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