
Recently, Attorney Zachary Roth was quoted in a news article by Tiffany Salameh of News4JAX. Specifically, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and 10 states are accusing six landlords, who collectively operate 1.3 million units in 43 states and the District of Columbia, of coordinating to keep Americans’ rents high. Allegedly, they are doing so by using an algorithm to help set rents and privately sharing sensitive information with their competitors to boost profits.
With this, Zachary Roth comments, “I think it confirms probably what a lot of people were thinking, especially post-COVID, in terms of what the housing market seemed like from a rental perspective, how difficult it was, how expensive it was.”
Further, the DOJ said one of six landlords agreed to cooperate with prosecutors. The proposed settlement is to restrict how they can use their competitors’ data and algorithms to set rents.
Zachary Roth notes that this does not provide any retroactive relief to renters, and adds, “The problem with the mechanism is the only way to truly make it right is to reduce rents of the people that suffered as a result of this price fixing. But that’s never going to be a practical outcome. So anything in the future is nothing more than you mentioned, as a slap on the wrist in the eyes of the people who have suffered as a result.”
To read the full article, titled, “DOJ is accusing 6 major landlords of scheming to keep rents high. Two of them manage 21 properties across Jacksonville,” simply click here.