Sousveilling the slumlords: Organizer tech and tenant struggle
Topics: Digital Geographies
, Geographic Information Science and Systems
,
Keywords: proptech, abolition, tenant organizing, housing justice, digital georgaphies, gis
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 76
Authors:
Alexander Ferrer, UCLA/Strategic Actions for a Just Economy
Erin McElroy, UT-Austin/Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
Terra Graziani, NYU/Anti-Eviction Mapping Project
,
,
,
,
,
,
,
Abstract
We are interested in exploring two aspects of ‘Abolitionist Proptech’ in practice, the emergent possibility for sousveillance of landlords by tenants and tenant’s advocates, and the construction of insurgent platforms which serve as infrastructures for collectivizing, rather than atomizing, tenant struggles in contrast what might be called consumer tech. This discussion will respond to the call to interrogate the “possibilities for infrastructures of support for, as, and with marginalized tenants” noted in the CFP. I would like to take as a particular case the Organizers Warning Notification and Information for Tenants tool (OWN-IT!), a project of Los Angeles based Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE), and the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project's (AEMP) Evictorbook Tool. Several aspects of these tools' evolution provide fertile material for this discussion. First, the tools were developed independently from the academy by a CBO who had engaged in partnership with a broad coalition of local grassroots and grass-tops organizations. Second, SAJE successfully advocated the alternative release of public code enforcement and habitability records from the County of Los Angeles in order to enable their integration into the tool and to improve access to crucial data on landlord behavior. Third, the tools have relatively unique affordances for collectivizing tenant struggle and investigation of their landlords, by providing a portfolio level snapshot, which in the SAJE case have been instrumental in organizing a corporate landlord tenant union now in the process of bringing a lawsuit against their shared owner.
Sousveilling the slumlords: Organizer tech and tenant struggle
Category
Virtual Paper Abstract
Description
This abstract is part of a session. Click here to view the session.
| Slides