Student Research Influences Spokane Ordinance Protecting Renters

Eastern student Allison Zimmerman, a full-time planner for SCJ Alliance and founder of Resolute Consulting LLC, is getting to the bottom of Spokane’s housing crisis.

Zimmerman first became aware of the vice-like grip that online leasing sites like RealPage have on rental pricing here in Spokane while working with Matthew Anderson, a professor of Urban and Regional Planning here at EWU.

In 2025, Zimmerman and Anderson co-wrote and published a report detailing the ways in which sites like Real Page have directly influenced homelessness and increased vacancy rates by coordinating the formation of landlord cartels through rent-fixing schemes in cities ranging from Spokane to Seattle. RealPage has employed AI-enabled algorithms to determine the highest possible rent their clients can charge.

In some markets, like Seattle’s South Lake Union District and Belltown, up to 80% of landlords contracted with RealPage, which gave them real-time data on the rent that all of their clients were charging, as well as their unit’s number of bathrooms, bedrooms, vacancies and lease-up dates among other sensitive information. RealPage used this data to recommend what they determined to be the highest possible rent their landlords could charge their clients. RealPage has even stated that they treat all of their clients’ units as if they are their own.

In 2023, RealPage was sued for violating anti-trust legislation. “I wish people were more aware,” Zimmerman says. “The rent fixing lawsuit is a big deal and impacts a lot of people, but I think very few people, especially renters, actually know about it.”

Anderson delves a bit deeper into the nefarious nature of rental algorithms, saying, “RealPage tells all of their clients where everyone is living, how many vacancies are out there and what landlords are charging. So, when they tell all of their clients to increase the rent, renters have no option other than to accept it.” RealPage even told some landlords to “sit on vacancies” until a higher rent could be charged, he adds.

The City of Spokane has since passed an ordinance that prohibits algorithmic rental price fixing, effective since Jan. 8, 2026, citing the article co-authored by Zimmerman and Anderson. According to Spokane Municipal Code, this will regulate residential housing prices and prevent the sort of monopoly that previously allowed landlords to use agencies like RealPage, to set fixed rental prices.

Zimmerman and Anderson hope that the eradication of price fixing via rental algorithms will relieve some of the pressure on rents here in Spokane, and help preserve more intermediary and entry-level housing, providing otherwise nonexistent opportunities for the local unhoused community to move from shelters into more permanent housing accommodations.

Read Zimmerman and Anderson’s paper, Nefarious Algorithms: Rent-Fixing via Algorithmic Collusion and the Role of Intentionality in the Pursuit of Class Monopoly Rent, online.

Visit the City of Spokane’s website to read Section 10.57.180 Prohibition on Algorithmic Rental Price Fixing.

**Story written by Rachel Weinberg.