Washington, D.C. — In response to news that the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has unanimously passed a first-in-nation municipal ordinance to ban algorithmic price setting in the rental housing market, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“San Francisco has just taken a pioneering step to ensure housing markets are functioning properly, and that greater housing supply converts to lower prices for renters,” Lee Hepner, Sr. Legal Counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Amid a generational housing crisis, RealPage’s rent-fixing software has allowed corporate landlords to hike rents while restricting supply in cities across the country. This will have a tremendous impact on San Francisco’s local housing market, and it is a model for other cities and states seeking to curb this abuse. We applaud Supervisor Peskin and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for their courageous action.”

The use of algorithmic price-fixing software is a fast-emerging threat to rental housing affordability. Companies like RealPage—whose software helps landlords coordinate to set rents above competitive levels and raise marginal profits, even at lower occupancy rates—have been connected to affordability crises in cities from Seattle to Atlanta. In San Francisco, approximately 70% of multifamily apartment buildings use revenue management software like that offered by RealPage.

RealPage and similar price fixing algorithms have attracted growing federal and state scrutiny since October 2022, when public reporting first began highlighting RealPage’s impact on rental housing markets. In his March 2024 State of the Union Address, President Biden highlighted the need to combat algorithmic price fixing in rental housing markets as part of his Administration’s economic agenda. Enforcement efforts include multi-district class action litigation in the Middle District of Tennessee, and federal and state antitrust lawsuits complaints filed by the DC Attorney General Schwalb and Arizona Attorney General Mayes. In recent months, federal lawmakers including Senators Wyden (OR) and Klobuchar (MN) and Rep.’s Balint and Garcia have proposed federal legislation to ban revenue management software from using non-public, competitively sensitive data to fix rents.

In May 2024, the FBI conducted a pre-dawn raid against an Atlanta-based property management company in apparent connection to the RealPage scandal. The Department of Justice is reportedly on the verge of filing an antitrust suit against RealPage.

Earlier this year, Economic Liberties and Local Progress released a joint brief outlining the tools that states and municipalities can use to combat the threat on their own.

Read our joint memo with Local Progress here.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.