Public Scholarship
Automating Gentrification in Times of Crisis
By Erin McElroy
Just Tech: Social Science Research Council. June 7, 2023.
Here, I continue to map out some of the harmful effects of these scopic “landlord technologies” in New York City housing. By landlord technologies, I refer to the various systems that landlords and property managers deploy in tenant housing—from virtual rental payment platforms to tenant screening systems to building access facial recognition systems. While many of these systems are considered “proptech” by the real estate industry, I use landlord tech to better signal the power dynamics undergirding these platforms. I also examine how and why these systems get rolled out in perceived times of crisis through the logics of crisis capitalism—or contexts in which profit-seeking agendas, companies, and programs frame their interventions as salvific and necessary.
PRISON TECH COMES HOME
By: ERIN MCELROY, MEREDITH WHITTAKER , & NICOLE E. WEBER
Public Books, August 18, 2021
Because of the pandemic, reliance on technology has increased tremendously, especially when it comes to surveillance systems. Landlords have began to utilize these systems to increase their control over tenant homes, extending the carceral state into private spaces. Thus, the name “prison technology” is born, and in this article, McElroy, Whitaker, Weber show how the “carceral state leverages computational technologies of surveillance and control to extend beyond the punishing walls of the prison,” as well as abolitio efforts.
Organizing as Joy: An Ocean-Hill Brownsville Story, with Tranae Moran and Fabian Rogers
By Issue Editor J. Khadijah Abdurahman, Tranae’ Moran, and Fabian Rogers
Logic Magazine, December 25, 2021
In 2018, the landlord of Atlantic Plaza Towers mandated for residents’ usual key fob system to be replaced with a facial recognition technology, which would violate their privacy and increase control of the landlord. The residents resisted this change, being led by Moran, and they successfully hindered this mandate. As a result, the Ocean Hill Brownsville Alliance (OBA) came to life, where both Tranae and former floor captain Fabian Rogers educate other residents about the danger of biometrics. In this article, they talk with Abdurahman “about what they’ve learned through their organizing work, and how the anti-surveillance struggle fits into the broader fight for environmental justice, social housing, and community reinvestment.”
Keeping an Eye on Landlord Tech
By ERIN MCELROY, WONYOUNG SO and NICOLE WEBER
Shelterforce, March 25, 2021
Because of the pandemic, housing justice movements have been on the rise, especially because tenants struggle to pay rent, while landlords have turned to another resource: landlord technology. Landlord tech essentially aids landlords in evicting non-paying tenants or exercising control over their homes to protect themselves for unruly situations. In turn, these companies who promote landlord tech “accumulate wealth at the expense of tenants.” In this article, McElroy, So, and Weber talk about landlord tech, its negative impacts on tenants, and housing justice resources and technology.
The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project produced Landlord Tech Watch, a platform for informing tenants about the different types of technology implemented by landlords, as well as the dangers and criticism that come with it. This site “includes a toolkit on how to fight landlord tech in one’s building, based upon the Ocean Hill–Brownsville Alliance’s successful fight against the installation of facial recognition in Atlantic Plaza Towers in Brooklyn.” However, with the development of COVID 19, landlord technology has only gained momentum, using the pandemic as an excuse for introducing intrusive and controlling apps and features, like smart locks and new security systems. These systems only benefit the landlord, and tenants must suffer at the cost.
COVID-19 Crisis Capitalism Comes to Real Estate
By ERIN MCELROY, MEREDITH WHITTAKER, and GENEVIEVE FRIED
Boston Review, May 7, 2020
Property technology is capitalism’s latest invention, with companies capitalizing on the pandemic to sell technology that would do more harm than good. “In their pivot to offer proptech as a solution for COVID-19 woes, proptech companies are pulling the curtain back on a vision of the world in which landlords and owners have increasing power over and insight into the lives of tenants, and in which surveillance and monitoring regimes are extended to make access to shelter and housing contingent on factors well beyond the payment of monthly rents” the authors write. Fortunately, there is resistance against such changes, with housing justice movements on the rise.
Exclusive Exposé: The Wild West Of Landlord Technology
By JOSEPH SMOOKE and DYAN RUIZ
[people.power.media], September 29, 2019
This article looks at the speculative elements of landlord tech, including studying the major ways that tenant screening and selection, property management, neighborhood & home surveillance and smart homes, and membership housing create new harms for tenants. Also explored are the big data players and who's getting rich from landlord tech including the platforms, corporations, private equity, venture capital, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and landlords & developers.
This essay focuses on the property technology incident at the Atlantic Plaza Towers when their wireless key-fob entrance system would be replaced with biometric facial recognition technology. These new digital technologies impart new frictions and harms despite frictionless advertisements.
