The Department of Housing and Urban Development is making it easier for people with criminal records to find housing.

In new guidance, released Monday, HUD tells landlords and home sellers that turning down tenants or buyers based on their criminal records may violate the Fair Housing Act.

People with criminal records aren’t a protected class under the Fair Housing Act, and the guidance from HUD’s general counsel says that in some cases, turning down an individual tenant because of his or her record can be legally justified.

But blanket policies of refusing to rent to anybody with a criminal record are de facto discrimination, the department says — because of the systemic disparities of the American criminal justice system.

When A Criminal Past Closes Doors

One in four Americans has a criminal record, as NPR’s Carrie Johnson has reported. Those records can include arrests that never led to convictions, as well as convictions for a wide range of crimes — from petty to serious — that may have happened decades ago.

A record can make it hard to find a job — or a home. Many private landlords and public housing projects have policies against renting to people with criminal records.

Take Melvin Lofton, who spoke with NPR’s Cheryl Corley. Lofton was convicted of burglary and theft when he was in his 20s; now he’s 51.

He lives with his mom, and says it would be hard to find housing without that family connection. He remembers one time when he tried to rent a home in a trailer park.

Melvin Lofton, who lives with his mother, says landlords have turned him away in the past because of his record. Cheryl Corley/NPR hide caption

toggle caption Cheryl Corley/NPR

“I was at work and the guy called me and told me to come pick up my keys. So I was happy. I got a place to stay,” Lofton says. “So then … 45 to 50 minutes later he calls and says, ‘Is there something you’re not telling me?’ and I say, ‘No, what is there? And he says, ‘You didn’t tell me you had a background.’ “

Lofton had been out of prison for 20 years at the time, Cheryl reports.

Seemingly Neutral Policies Can Be Discriminatory

HUD’s new guidance warns that landlords could be breaking the law when they refuse to rent to people with criminal records — even if they have no intention to discriminate — because such a policy would likely have a disproportionate impact on African-American and Hispanic applicants.

Housing Secretary Julian Castro puts it another way, NPR’s Cheryl Corley reports: “When landlords refuse to rent to anyone who has an arrest record, they effectively bar the door to millions of folks of color for no good reason.”

E. Ann Carson, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Dept of Justice, “Prisoners in 2014,” and Census data, via HUD. Camila Domonoske/NPR hide caption

toggle caption Camila Domonoske/NPR

HUD notes that whether an individual landlord’s policy has a discriminatory impact will need to be determined on a case-by-case basis. But on a national level, HUD provided a list of statistics — direct from the Justice Department — demonstrating disproportionately high rates of arrest and incarceration based on race. They noted African-American men are imprisoned at a rate nearly six times that of white men, and Hispanic men at more than twice the rate of white men.

All Criminal Records Aren’t Created Alike …

That doesn’t mean landlords are completely barred from considering criminal records — but they’d have to prove that their policy legitimately serves to protect safety or property.

Saying “criminals are poor tenants” doesn’t cut it, HUD says: “Bald assertions based on generalization or stereotype” aren’t sufficient.

Barring people based just on arrest records is no good, HUD says, because arrests alone aren’t proof of guilt. And even if you only consider convictions, refusing to rent to all ex-cons — “no matter when the conviction occurred, what the underlying conduct entailed, or what the convicted person has done since then,” HUD writes — also isn’t defensible, since not all ex-cons will pose a risk to safety or property.

Instead, HUD writes, landlords should have a policy that takes into consideration what the crime was and when it happened, as well as other factors, to reduce the discriminatory impact. (The only exception is if a conviction was for manufacturing or distributing drugs.)

… And You Can’t Use Records As A Pretext For Discrimination

HUD also warns landlords that if they do intend to discriminate, and use criminal records as a cover for their actions, they can be found in violation.

For instance, landlords who reject black or Hispanic applicants ostensibly because of criminal records — but accept a white tenant with a similar criminal record — could be found guilty of violating the Fair Housing Act.

That discrimination could happen even before a candidate applies, HUD writes:

“Intentional discrimination may be proven based on evidence that, when responding to inquiries from prospective applicants, a property manager told a African American individual that her criminal record would disqualify her from renting an apartment, but did not similarly discourage a White individual with a comparable criminal record from applying.”

In both cases — whether the discrimination is accidental or intentional — each instance would have to be considered on a case by case basis.

But “arbitrary and overbroad” policies, as well as any that are mere pretexts to conceal discrimination, aren’t protected.

HUD officials told NPR’s Cheryl Corley that the goal is to make landlords consider: Is their policy towards criminal records about keeping a community safe?

Or is it about keeping somebody out of a home?

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The first sign seems innocuous enough if you don’t know what you’re looking at: Files in the computer appear as decrypt.html, or decrypt.txt instead of their usual names.

Then, you click. A box pops up that gives you an ultimatum: Want the file? You’ll have to pay up, and probably in bitcoin.

That is what happened at U.S. hospitals in the past month in California, Kentucky, Maryland and the District of Columbia. The malware attacks have left the 14 hospitals — 10 of which are part of the MedStar hospital group — unable to access patient data and, in some cases, having to turn patients away.

Hospitals are not alone in their vulnerability; last month, a cafe in Maryland was hit with a ransomware attack. In another instance, Mac computers were targeted. Last year, police in Massachusetts paid hackers to return access to their data. Companies and individuals in the U.S. lost more than $24 million to ransomware in 2015, according to the FBI.

And in February at the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles, administrators paid the asking price of 40 bitcoin, about $16,664 at the time, to regain access to their data. At MedStar, the hospital is being asked to pay 45 bitcoin.

Several MedStar employees saw a message on their computer screens: “You just have 10 days to send us the Bitcoin. After 10 days we will remove your private key and it’s impossible to recover your files.”

“The big difference with health care is that the consequences are greater,” Kevin Fu, an associate professor at the University of Michigan who studies computer security issues in hospitals, told the MIT Technology Review. “You can lose your email and that’s annoying, but patient records are needed in order to treat patients.”

Though bitcoin is not in itself a driver of cybercrime, it allows the hackers to have instant access to the money without its having to go through a bank or credit card. Peter Van Valkenburgh, director of research at Coin Center, a nonprofit dedicated to digital currency advocacy, explains that often the ransomware will include easy-to-follow instructions on how to quickly access and trade bitcoin.

Hospitals hit by the attack felt the pressure of being without patient information. At a MedStar hospital, a patient was given an antibiotic that, a nurse told the Washington Post, “should have been stopped eight hours earlier.” At the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center last month, patients were diverted to other hospitals. In both situations, the hospitals returned to paper records.

On its website Thursday, MedStar posted: “MedStar Health’s priority continues to be providing high quality, safe patient care, as we work to fully restore all of our major IT systems. Our doors remain open, with a few exceptions. With the dedication and commitment of our clinicians and associates, we are thankful that we have been able to perform more than 1,000 surgeries since Monday morning’s malicious malware attack.”

Rick Pollack, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association, emphasizes that hospitals should take steps to protect patient data: “Hospital leaders are using the lessons learned in previous attacks and are applying best cybersecurity practices shared by the AHA in an effort to anticipate and respond to existing and emerging threats,” he says.

The FBI is investigating several of these recent attacks. An FBI official tells NPR:

“Companies can prevent and mitigate malware infection by utilizing appropriate backup and malware detection and prevention systems, and training employees to be skeptical of emails, attachments, and websites they don’t recognize. The FBI does not condone payment of ransom, as payment of extortion monies may encourage continued criminal activity, lead to other victimizations, or be used to facilitate serious crimes.”

Hospitals can take a variety of steps to safeguard against these kinds of attacks, like using HTTPS encryption, two-factor authentication and implementing file backups on a separate server. “For hospitals right now, backups of customer data on unconnected machines or machines in other networks is essential,” Van Valkenburgh says.

He adds that patients should have more control over who has access to their personal records, and when. But until then? “We really are at the mercy of these centralized institutions,” he says.

Naomi LaChance is a business news intern at NPR.

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The Federal Communications Commission is officially proposing to begin regulating how Internet service providers handle user privacy. The agency is looking to restrict the companies’ ability to share with advertisers and other third parties the information they collect about what their customers do online.

The agency’s vote, however, was delayed for more than three hours by last-minute negotiations among commissioners and the chairman. At stake was a budget cap for a telecom subsidy program, which the FCC subsequently voted to expand to cover both phone and Internet service.

The Privacy Proposal

The FCC voted to begin collecting public comment on its chairman’s proposal to let consumers weigh in on what information ISPs collect about them and how that information gets used.

As we reported previously, “as they connect us to the Internet, ISPs have insight into our lives — websites we frequent, apps we download or locations we visit — and may use that data for their own promotions or sell it to data brokers to be used for marketing or other purposes.”

Under this new proposal — formally approved by a 3-2 Democratic majority of FCC commissioners — consumers would be able to opt out of programs that let ISPs use the data they collect to offer other services themselves, but the companies would require explicit opt-in consent for data to be shared with third parties.

“It’s the consumers’ information and the consumers should have the right to determine how it’s used,” said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Telecom companies are against this proposal, arguing it puts them on an unequal footing with other Internet companies that collect data on users, like Google and Netflix, which are only overseen by the Federal Trade Commission. Republican FCC commissioners, too, dissented from the proposal, calling it corporate favoritism.

The FCC will now collect public comment on this proposal before voting to set new rules.

The Subsidy Changes

Since 1985, a government program called Lifeline has helped low-income people pay for phone service — first landlines and later cellphones. On Thursday, the FCC voted to begin allowing the recipients of the subsidy, which is $9.25 a month, to choose whether to spend it on a phone or an Internet connection, wired or wireless.

This is the vote that delayed the typically punctual FCC under Wheeler. The FCC’s two Republican commissioners and one of the Democrats, Mignon Clyburn, had apparently worked on a last-minute deal to cap the budget of the program at $2 billion a year, but the deal was ultimately scuttled.

“I negotiated in good faith to have a budget mechanism in place that ensures millions of new households will have the opportunity to afford advanced telecommunications services,” Clyburn said. “Upon further deliberation, I concluded that such a mechanism could not fully achieve my vision of a 21st century Lifeline program.”

The program, funded through fees paid by telephone companies and users, spent about $1.5 billion in 2015 and has no cap. It had in the past come under fire for waste and abuse and underwent updates and changes in 2012. Republicans have long called for restrictions to the subsidy’s budget.

The FCC voted — also 3-2 along party lines, with stern and impassioned objections from the Republicans — to set a budget of $2.25 billion a year without a hard cap and impose new eligibility checks, service standards and a funding review process. The FCC estimates that the subsidy currently helps about 12 million households afford phone service.

The Unfinished Business

The FCC has a few other things on tap for the coming weeks:

• Airwaves Auction

The agency on Tuesday launched a major auction of airwaves, or in telecom parlance, spectrum. It’s expected to take several months.

The agency plans to first reclaim airwaves from TV stations and then sell them to telecom companies in what’s going to be the most complex auction of radio frequencies in history. The idea is to incentivize broadcasters to give up some of their airwaves, freeing up more spectrum for the growing use of mobile devices.

• Cable Merger

The regulators are also expected to deliver a verdict on the proposed $67 billion cable merger of Charter Communications, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks. All signs are pointing to an approval with conditions, but the timing and details are unclear.

As the New York Times reports, the deal would create the second-largest broadband provider behind Comcast and third-largest video provider after Comcast (whose bid to buy Time Warner Cable was rejected last year) and DirecTV (which was bought by AT&T last year).

• Net Neutrality

And the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will decide whether the FCC gets to keep the hotly debated “net neutrality” rules that redefined the agency’s authority over Internet service providers.

Though the timing of the court decision is uncertain, Wheeler in an interview with NPR earlier this month said it could be “in the next few weeks,” consistent with the industry’s expectation of the ruling sometime this spring.

The key question in front of the court is whether the FCC had proper authority to reclassify broadband Internet as a more heavily regulated telecommunications service, similar to traditional telephony.

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