This article is part of the Under the Lens series
The housing and tech worlds seem to be getting pretty cozy together.
We’ve all been seeing it—the interest in and use of new tech tools has been exploding across every facet of the housing world for a while now.
On one hand, there’s a lot of excitement and hope.
We’re seeing new software that streamlines access to affordable housing rentals, tech solutions that standardize housing applications and provide real-time updates for things like a person’s status on a housing waitlist (both of which can save renters and housing providers time), and tools that help families trace legal ownership of properties that have been passed down to them, properties that they may not have a clear title to.
Housing researchers are even using artificial intelligence (AI), to unlock data faster, allowing them to get a clearer picture of what’s really happening with housing in the U.S. One researcher we spoke with said it would have taken his team years of manual work to get the information that their AI model was able to compile in just a few days.
There’s also a lot of talk about AI’s potential for increasing access to homeownership for borrowers of color and for those who may not qualify for a loan due to a thin credit history, bad credit, or other issues. The housing experts we’ve spoken with say there is a tremendous opportunity here to better predict risk and stop excluding people who would be good borrowers, if we can do it right.
But getting it right is complicated. And that’s where some of the worry comes in as the housing world gets even more intimately involved with tech.
Discrimination in the mortgage lending industry still hasn’t been eradicated. Black homebuyers are still more likely to be denied a mortgage than white homebuyers. And that means the data that’s used to train AI has discrimination baked right into it. So, unless AI models are trained to take fairness into account, racist and discriminatory lending practices will persist.
Another trend that’s raising big concern and tenant pushback is the growth of “landlord tech.” This includes things like neighborhood surveillance systems, app-based technology, facial recognition tech inside and outside properties, tenant screening, and more. Housing advocates say landlords are often using tech against tenants, making an already strong power imbalance even more unfair.
Take tenant screening, which has been used by landlords for decades to determine whether a prospective renter is worthy of housing. Companies that offer screening technology scrape renter information from a bevy of online sources, and that information is often incomplete, incorrect, and unvetted. Even when correct, the information may not be relevant for determining a person’s ability to pay rent. These issues, as well as many other problems revolving around landlord tech, have kept some renters out of the homes they need and qualify for.
It’s true that during this time of tremendous technological change, work is being done to ensure tech is used for good. There are organizations and companies that are working to train AI models to take fairness into account, and there are housing advocates and organizers fighting to protect private renter information and push landlords to better vet the information they gain from tenant screening programs, among other work.
But can the proper guardrails be put in place soon enough so innovative technology doesn’t exacerbate the housing crisis? Shelterforce will take a closer look at some of these big issues in its new Under the Lens series, How Tech Is Changing Housing.
We’ll explore the implications of two significant landlord tech tools: software programs that screen applicants and those that set rents. Tenant screening programs have long been criticized for being discriminatory, burdensome, and opaque, and rent-setting tech has been accused of helping landlords collude to raise rents nationwide. Both have prompted so much pushback at the local, state, and federal level, in fact, that a new association—the Real Estate Technology and Transformation Center—was formed to bring real estate and tech leaders together for “a unified pro-tech, pro-housing voice.”
We’ll also examine how affordable housing providers are increasingly using online platforms and cloud-based technology to manage housing, and whether it’s helping them increase resident services or lower operating costs. In some cases, it’s doing both.
There’s also some interesting movement on the tenant front, as renters and organizers are using new programs to hold landlords accountable. We’ll take a closer look at the chatbots, eviction helpers, landlord trackers, and other programs that are having a notable effect in parts of the U.S.
Shelterforce spoke with dozens of people for this series—advocates in the housing and technology fields, lawyers, researchers, housing developers and managers, software developers, renters, fair housing advocates, tenant union leaders, and others.
But the stories we’re reporting on for this series reflect just a small slice of what’s happening at the junction of housing and technology. We will continue to cover this topic beyond this series, and invite you to reach out if you have something you think we might want to look into.
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