It should obviously be illegal - preferably criminal - to check a credit score for a place to live, anyway - because a credit score, probably at least half the time - has little to no impact on how reliable of an individual you are financially.
I live in Canada, where health care is covered, but dental isn’t. I had an injury several years ago which effectively destroyed many of my teeth, and ended up more than $15,000 into debt over it. I couldn’t make my payments on time for probably a couple years, and even though I finally managed to pay it off, it’s a black spot on my credit history for years to come - through absolutely no fault of my own.
This is infinitely worse in the USA, where the pathetic government that promises ‘freedom’ somehow doesn’t get that universal health care is a huge part of that.
I have family in the USA who got cancer.
Due to the absolutely bullshit health care system there, they are completely, utterly, financially devastated.
This family member had to be stopped from committing suicide when they found out just how much it would cost to save their life. That they would have to declare bankruptcy. That their credit score, and anything they'd ever need to do with money in the rest of their life - was completely gone.
It’s literally why I don’t live in the USA anymore. Scared me shitless.
You know what’s way - way worse than getting cancer?
Having to pay more than you could ever possibly afford for getting cancer.
Good luck getting a house after that, thanks to this bullshit.
According to credit scores - you should be held personally responsible for the fact that you got that disease.
Literally - how dare you get cancer. Enjoy having a shit credit score for the rest of however long you have to live.
The fact is - people need places to live, and if people have poor credit - especially if it’s of no fault of their own, but due to the bullshit system we live in that has no room for genuine accidents - how the hell are these people ever supposed to find a place to live?
I had to go out of my way - and pretty much pay extra - to find a landlady here in Toronto even willing to give me enough understanding to rent a place - and I make about $100k CDN a year.
I had to explain the whole situation, come up with documents to prove that’s what actually happened, and even then I was lucky to get a place to rent. I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who might have half or less of my income and poor credit through no fault of their own but are looking for a place to live.
Fuck the credit score system. It is an abhorrent human rights issue - is simply disgusting and disturbing - and only serves the rich.
A credit score does not take into account for humanness.
It’s the nuke of weaponized capitalism, yet another tool to keep the rich more rich and the poor more poor.
May the greedy miscreants who developed and enforce this wicked system rot in a special kind of hell.
Contrary to your initial assertion, credit scores are built using real-world models based on historical data that indicate a debtor’s likelihood of repaying debts. Fair, Isaac, and Co. (aka FICO) pioneered this technique in the 1960s; one founder was a mathematician and the other an engineer. This score helped creditors make more accurate decisions based on real data; before that, credit decisions were usually made by individual loan officers whose decisions were often based on how well they knew you personally and your standing in the community (and were frequently racist, often overly so).
Is the credit score system imperfect? Yes. Is it based on a mountain of bullshit? No.
(That said, I’m really sorry to hear about the tragedies that have impacted you and your family. I don’t think it’s fair that we don’t collectively insure one another for accidents, either.)
The issue is that now, credit scores -also- reflect how good a credit -consumer- you are, not just your risk profile. How profitable a customer are you likely to be, etc.
Paying off a loan early can often impact your credit score negatively despite being evidence in favor of your risk profile. In my case paying off my auto loan early gave me a credit score lower than before I had the loan in the first place.
That's not because it measures your value as a consumer, though. It's because the the accuracy of their risk estimation is greater when there are more open accounts to analyze. (And even then, the relative "penalty" is small.)
why does an account have to be open to analyze it? Surely me successfully paying every monthly payment and having money to spare to pay off the loan early would indicate that my risk as a borrower is lower than someone who can barely make payments? If we were talking years down the line it should weigh less than an open account but my score dropped instantly after closing out the loan.
Maybe there is a regulatory aspect I don't understand that restricts analysis of closed accounts or something. Barring that Occam's razor would suggest that it hurts your credit score because paying off a loan early deprives the lender of interest which makes you a less appealing candidate at a given rate. After all, credit scores are a product for lenders, if it didn't do this they might go to another bureau that does.
Fundamentally the opacity of it all is a problem in its own right. We don't have any real insight into how the calculations are made but they dictate huge amounts of our lives.
How about when the only change to your credit profile is paying down multiple accounts, on time and seeing your available credit increase, your credit utilization decrease, your account aging increase...
The subject’s race is not in a credit report. So that’s better, but as long as people look for other clues as to the applicant’s race (such as their name or address history), that’s going to be a problem. That’s not the credit report’s fault, though.
We mustn’t let perfection be the enemy of continuous improvement.
>I had an injury several years ago which effectively destroyed many of my teeth, and ended up more than $15,000 into debt over it. I couldn’t make my payments on time for probably a couple years, and even though I finally managed to pay it off, it’s a black spot on my credit history for years to come - through absolutely no fault of my own.
Medical debt is not weighted the same as consumer debt[1] and is not as ruinous as defaulting on a loan or credit card for many lenders. The newer scoring models also ignore paid collections. So, for many lenders there is no 'black spot' since you have paid it off. Even before the newer models came out, I knew people who ignored massive medical debt/collections when deciding to grant loan and rental approvals or not.
>and only serves the rich.
It serves the people who understand that a loan or credit card needs to be paid back per the terms of the contract. There are also financially educated/knowledgeable 'poor' people who understand this and have a good-excellent credit score, just as there are 'rich' people who never learned financial responsibility and have a terrible credit score. It serves the person with a good+ score.
This includes medical bills that are "absolutely no fault of [their] own", there are services that can help with payments, almost all lenders will work with someone on repayment if an effort is made to care to do so. Also, politics/opinions aside, refusing treatment or medical travel to a cheaper country is an option. Not a great one, but still an option.
I live in Canada, where health care is covered, but dental isn’t. I had an injury several years ago which effectively destroyed many of my teeth, and ended up more than $15,000 into debt over it. I couldn’t make my payments on time for probably a couple years, and even though I finally managed to pay it off, it’s a black spot on my credit history for years to come - through absolutely no fault of my own.
This is infinitely worse in the USA, where the pathetic government that promises ‘freedom’ somehow doesn’t get that universal health care is a huge part of that.
I have family in the USA who got cancer.
Due to the absolutely bullshit health care system there, they are completely, utterly, financially devastated.
This family member had to be stopped from committing suicide when they found out just how much it would cost to save their life. That they would have to declare bankruptcy. That their credit score, and anything they'd ever need to do with money in the rest of their life - was completely gone.
It’s literally why I don’t live in the USA anymore. Scared me shitless.
You know what’s way - way worse than getting cancer?
Having to pay more than you could ever possibly afford for getting cancer.
Good luck getting a house after that, thanks to this bullshit.
According to credit scores - you should be held personally responsible for the fact that you got that disease.
Literally - how dare you get cancer. Enjoy having a shit credit score for the rest of however long you have to live.
The fact is - people need places to live, and if people have poor credit - especially if it’s of no fault of their own, but due to the bullshit system we live in that has no room for genuine accidents - how the hell are these people ever supposed to find a place to live?
I had to go out of my way - and pretty much pay extra - to find a landlady here in Toronto even willing to give me enough understanding to rent a place - and I make about $100k CDN a year.
I had to explain the whole situation, come up with documents to prove that’s what actually happened, and even then I was lucky to get a place to rent. I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who might have half or less of my income and poor credit through no fault of their own but are looking for a place to live.
Fuck the credit score system. It is an abhorrent human rights issue - is simply disgusting and disturbing - and only serves the rich.
A credit score does not take into account for humanness.
It’s the nuke of weaponized capitalism, yet another tool to keep the rich more rich and the poor more poor.
May the greedy miscreants who developed and enforce this wicked system rot in a special kind of hell.