Your Mission

You own a duplex you inherited from your grandmother and rent both units to help cover the $1,400/month mortgage. Over the past 18 months, you've rejected 23 applicants and accepted 4. Last week, a rejected applicant named David Okafor left you a voicemail saying he's filing a fair housing complaint because he believes you're screening out applicants by national origin and income source — he had a Section 8 voucher and a stable job. You pulled up your records and realized you've been using a mental checklist your old property manager gave you years ago: minimum credit score of 680, no gaps in employment over 90 days, income must be 3x rent from a single W-2 job, and no prior evictions. You never thought these rules were biased, but now you're worried. Your county's Human Rights Commission gives landlords 30 days to respond to a complaint with documentation showing their screening criteria are applied consistently and don't unfairly filter out people based on race, national origin, disability, or income source. That deadline is in 5 days. You need to figure out — fast — whether your own screening checklist has hidden bias, and if so, how to fix it before you have to respond.