A rental property company that uses a personality test to screen tenants has also admitted to scanning what prospective tenants post on social media to flag possible bad renters.
The owners of the Brixton Flats building in Vancouver are among a growing number of landlords in Canada using a controversial online personality test, which one lawyer says may be a potential violation of human rights.
Global News learned that Certn, the Victoria startup that makes the software, has also been scanning the online activity of potential tenants to look for any negative information and in one recent case a person was denied tenancy in B.C. over a series of Twitter posts he made about U.S. President Donald Trump.
Certn co-founder Andrew McLeod says his product actually helps tenants by allowing them to showcase a good personality.
WATCH: Potential tenants asked to fill out personality test
“We’re looking to show that an applicant is clean, that they’re credible, and we’re looking to do it in a way that’s not very invasive,” McLeod told Global News.
The B.C. government hasn’t been so quick to agree. The practice is currently under investigation by the privacy commissioner and earlier this spring the company was forced to stop scanning Facebook and Twitter on behalf of landlords in B.C.
LinkedIn is still fair game, along with almost everything else that is in the public domain.
Ashley Syer, a Vancouver lawyer who specializes in tenants’ rights, is concerned the personality test component of Certn’s product may be an affront to human rights.
“Housing is one of the protected areas under the B.C. Human Rights Code and you can’t discriminate against a tenant or prospective tenant for a variety of reasons,” Syer said.
Certn says it provides the test to landlords and says 40,000 units in B.C. right now are being rented using their software.
On Monday, McLeod said via Twitter that Certn recommends “40 per cent more applicants than the credit bureaus.”
Jordan Milne, the president of the company that owns the Brixton Flats building, told Global News on Monday that they will cease working with Certn, citing privacy concerns over the information Certn has been collecting and the ongoing investigation by the provincial privacy commissioner.
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