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The Impact of Proptech and the Datafication of Real Estate on the Human Right to Housing
No full textProptech is undermining the human right to housing. Proptech is a term of art for the digital transformation of the real estate industry. It includes a range of real estate businesses engaged in development, financing, construction, management, and more. Proptech’s boosters promise frictionless and efficient housing markets. However, Proptech appears to be reinforcing existing power imbalances in real estate markets that are masked by the supposed objectivity and opacity of computer-generated processes. Meanwhile, countries across the globe face a profound housing crisis, with a lack of affordable and safe housing, high rates of homelessness, and rampant housing discrimination and segregation. Proptech’s impact may violate the human right to housing, which recognizes housing as the basis of stability and security for individuals and families. This Article examines five forms of Proptech through a human rights lens: (1) tenant screening algorithms; (2) digital mortgage financing; (3) online, platform-based advertising for real estate; (4) home surveillance technology, including facial recognition technology; and (5) short-term rental platforms. For each form of Proptech, the Article describes how the human right to housing is violated and explains the legal framework in the United States that governs these technologies. The Article also highlights human rights advocacy attempting to hold Proptech accountable. This advocacy includes repositioning big data as a counterweight to the dynamics of data capitalism and housing financialization, leveraging it instead to expand housing opportunities
The Commodification of Children and the Poor, and the Theory of Stategraft
Full text linkAcross the country, human service agencies, juvenile and family courts, prosecutors, probation departments, police officers, sheriffs, and detention and treatment facilities are churning impoverished children and adults through revenue operations with starkly disproportionate racial impact. Rather than being true to their intended missions of improving welfare and providing equal justice for vulnerable populations, the institutions are mining them with extractive practices that are harmful, unlawful, unconstitutional, and unethical. This Essay considers such commodification schemes under the lens of Professor Bernadette Atuahene’s excellent and important theory of stategraft. The examples discussed provide support for Atuahene’s theory, and this Essay simultaneously urges a broad understanding of the theory’s definitional elements to fully capture the scope of stategraft practices—and to help expand and link the community of scholars and advocates working to expose, unravel, and end such state-led predatory mechanisms
