Rents are high -- a new bill in Congress aims to change that

New legislation in Congress aims to tackle a financial burden weighing on millions of households -- rent that is "too damn high," as one New York City housing activist famously claimed.

The bill, introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and co-sponsored by eight other Senate Democrats, targets companies that collect data on rental markets from landlords and then use the data for an algorithm to help broadly determine rents.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Klobuchar called it a "high-tech" version of collusion, saying companies that use these models are widely sourcing rents from competitors and colluding to drive up costs for consumers. The landlords plug in their nonpublic information related to rents into the RealPage software and then are able to receive pricing recommendations, circumventing normal competitive strategies for setting rents. The bill, she said, wouldn't prevent landlords from using algorithms -- but it would stop companies from illegally working together to set higher rents.