THE BLACKLIST
“I AM KIND OF JUST MARKED, FOR WHAT FEELS LIKE YEARS. AND NOBODY IS GOING TO GIVE ME A CHANCE BECAUSE OF THAT ONE MISTAKE ON MY RECORD.”
LAST YEAR, Jona Perales was evicted from an apartment they shared with their stepdad in southwest Dallas after failing to pay rent. Since then, Perales has applied at hundreds of places—apartments, second-chance housing, rooms for rent—only to be denied. “The landlord must have put my name somewhere else or something, like a blacklist,” they said. “Like some sort of blacklist that I don’t know about.” In February, they moved into an extended-stay motel in Arlington.
In mid-March, Perales started to cough and feel feverish. Amid a national shortage of COVID-19 tests, they couldn’t get tested for the coronavirus, so they couldn’t qualify for sick pay from their employer, Uber, and their account was suspended. As the pandemic spread across Texas, some cities passed eviction moratoriums intended to keep people like Perales sheltered—but those protections didn’t extend to motels. So Perales moved out of their room and began living in their car.
They eventually started working for the U.S. Census Bureau and saved up nearly $2,000, including the $317 Uber eventually offered Perales in sick pay, but they still couldn’t find a place to live. “I had all that money and I couldn’t even get a room in a house,” they said. “That was really disheartening. I am kind of just marked, for what feels like years. And nobody is going to want to give me a chance because of that one mistake on my record.”
When someone applies for an apartment, a landlord usually runs a background check through one of hundreds of private tenant screening companies. These companies produce automated reports about a prospective renter by aggregating criminal and civil court records with credit history and other publicly available data. Some reports include detailed
