
Landlord Tech Watch – What Is Landlord Tech? - dfgdghdf
https://antievictionmappingproject.github.io/landlordtech/
======
aiisahik
I read this and realized I fully support landlord tech.

\- Tenant screening? I want to live with good neighbors.

\- Cameras in the apartment building? Yes please. I want to catch package
thieves.

\- Brokers for home sales? Absolutely - traditional brokers take 3-6% and
drive up the cost of housing.

\- Rent to own? The renter / owner divide has gotten wider in cities and we
need solutions to fix this.

Landlord tech is certainly not good for city renters who think they deserve
lower than market rent purely on account of (1) how long they have lived in
the city and (2) how little they earn. But being pro tenant doesn't mean you
need to oppose everything that landlords do. Technology is one the very very
few ways an oppressive system can change. The oppressors are not always
landlords - they are brokers, real estate developers, law makers, voters,
other tenants who sit on their rent controlled housing until they die.

P.S. I'm a tenant paying market price for rental housing.

~~~
crumbshot
> _Landlord tech is certainly not good for city renters who think they deserve
> lower than market rent purely on account of (1) how long they have lived in
> the city and (2) how little they earn._

Why shouldn't low income earners pay lower rent? From a humanitarian
perspective, it doesn't make sense to have a landlord greedily siphoning off
the vast majority of a person's income, just so that person can have fulfilled
the basic human right of not being homeless. It's parasitic.

~~~
nradov
If we want low-income people to be able to live in certain areas then the best
solution is to just give them money and let them obtain housing at market
rates. We can do that through income redistribution, by taxing high-income
people (which may include some landlords among others). Forcing landlords to
rent at below market rates distorts the market and causes artificial housing
shortages.

~~~
hammock
>taxing landlords

Don't you think that would just drive up the market price ? (by restricting
supply i.e. making landlordship less desirable)

~~~
nradov
Income is taxed at the same rates regardless of source. That doesn't make
landlording any more or less desirable than other investments. In general all
classes of long-term investments generate roughly the same risk-adjusted
returns.

~~~
hammock
OP edited their comment, after I had already replied, from "taxing landlords"
to "taxing high-income people (which may include some landlords)" so you
missed that earlier nuance.

------
kadabra9
So what exactly is this article advocating for?

\- Not running background checks or verifying income on tenants? \- Stopping
listing sites like Zillow from listing foreclosures? \- Stopping cash RE
transactions?

Sorry, but as someone who has been involved with properties for years I am
going to use the tools and data needed to ensure I am finding the right
tenants that can afford to live there and will respect my property. I really
couldn't care less what the "Woke Police" think about it.

~~~
nicoffeine
In civilized societies, the right to shelter is part of the social
contract.[1] The Unites States does not provide this, so people are at the
whims of private enterprises for their survival.

What the "woke police" are saying is that letting this kind of infrastructure
spread is setting the stage for more inequality. A private, unregulated Big
Brother ruling real estate for a few wealthy owners is the definition of
oppression. Anger against aristocracy and feudalism is one of the reasons we
fought for independence.[2]

Let's take your situation as an example. Unless you are fabulously wealthy,
you are only one market crash and/or critical illness away from bankruptcy.
Larger competitors will gobble up your assets for pennies on the dollar, and
then everyone will refuse to rent to you because of your financial history.

Right now the system is working in your favor. What happens when it isn't?

[1]
[https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/housing/2019/09/housi...](https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/housing/2019/09/housing-
basic-human-right-vienna-model-social-housing)

[2] [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/does-
in...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/does-income-
inequality-really-violate-us-principles/479577/)

~~~
Chris2048
Civilised societies are democratic ones, does the populace, in general, agree
with your concept of the social contract?

If you are going to talk about risk, why not attack a few probabilities on
those scenarios, then we can talk about insurance.

~~~
Chris2048
I mean "attach", not attack.

------
wtracy
I really wish this page did a better job explaining _why_ "landlord tech" is
problematic. It doesn't really go deeper than mentioning erosion of privacy
(without concretely explaining how that happens) and making vague statements
about racial inequity and evictions.

As it is now, it reads like an appeal to the general resentment of "big tech"
and of landlords ("if it makes their jobs more efficient, it must be bad!")
than an actual exploration of the problem.

I don't doubt that the articles linked at the end describe some horrifying
real problems, but making the audience sift through a list of links is not an
effective way of motivating people.

~~~
SilasX
Agreed. The site leads with (interspersing my reaction):

> Is your building management moving online?

I'm more against apartments that _don 't_ use such tech; they make payment,
maintenance requests, and communication a lot easier.

>Have new cameras been installed in your home or neighborhood? Has access to
your building changed? For instance, you no longer have a standard key?

Security cameras and electronic locks are great, for the most part. The latter
allows auditing of who accessed my place.

>Is your landlord using new payment, notification, or screening systems?

See first point. Although I note (from two difference places since moving to
Austin) many to have moved screening over to "get a $100k liability insurance
policy and you're good" (~$100-200/year).

With that said, given how FB et al have their tentacles in everything, now I
am worried about how much privacy they bleed when I use such resident portals.

~~~
HarryHirsch
_Security cameras and electronic locks are great, for the most part. The
latter allows auditing of who accessed my place_

I would like to audit the landlord's daughter. Seriously, who or what I'm
bringing home is no one's business. There was a time when surveillance went
overboard so much that they wrote restrictions on it into the Constitution,
but unfortunately the Constitution puts restraints only on the government.
You'd like to see them put onto private parties as well. And then there's
information leaking. Jeff Bezos owns the nation's doorbell cameras, he knows
who lives where and shares the information freely with the cops that no one
trusts, all without a warrent.

 _Is your landlord using new payment, notification, or screening systems?_

Having rented from bankruptcy artists more than once I'd really really
appreciate a credit history of the landlord. A repair history of the building
would be nice to have, too. Can't move into a place where the roof needs
fixing but the owner is too overextended to fix it.

~~~
leetcrew
> Seriously, who or what I'm bringing home is no one's business.

sure, if you're renting an entire building. less so if you're sharing a
building with other tenants.

> Having rented from bankruptcy artists more than once I'd really really
> appreciate a credit history of the landlord. A repair history of the
> building would be nice to have, too. Can't move into a place where the roof
> needs fixing but the owner is too overextended to fix it.

I bet you could get some of this if you offered to pay above market rent or if
you show interest in a unit that's been listed for a while.

------
owenversteeg
I'm very surprised to see most of the comments here in favor of the "landlord
tech" described.

Some examples, from the site, are movement recognition systems forcing you to
perform a "humiliating dance" to enter the building, being forced to install
multiple apps to maintain access to your apartment, and mandatory facial
recognition to enter your apartment.

These are all real examples that are installed today! This is a disgusting
violation of people's privacy.

~~~
bpt3
In my opinion, the reasons for the reaction here are:

1\. The technology is "dual use" and the negative examples like you described
can be regulated away in general, so the benefits remain and abuse is reduced
and punished when it does occur.

2\. The over the top bias inherent in the site is offputting to anyone not in
completely agreement with the ideology of the creators of the site, which
represents a fringe of American society in my experience.

~~~
Can_Not
>which represents a fringe of American society in my experience.

*fringe of the HN demographic

~~~
bpt3
Well in this case, yes by default.

Are you implying that the US population in general is more aligned with the
ideology of the submission?

~~~
Can_Not
When I'm at work, I'm almost the only person who is not (yet) a homeowner.
When I'm with my friends, I'm almost the only person who makes more than $X
and might be a home owner in the next 5 years.

You not talking to poor people is not the absence of poor people existing.

~~~
bpt3
As I suspected, you have nothing but baseless insults and vague complaints to
back up your opinion.

I can assure you that the views expressed by this project represent a fringe
of the US population, and based on this interaction and previous ones with
other individuals with a similar mindset, I sincerely hope it remains that
way.

~~~
Can_Not
> baseless insults

Such as...?

------
Pfhreak
HN seems to be very anti-surveillance tech, I guess until it's the landlords
doing the surveilling?

Housing should not be a commodity at all.

In my lifetime I've seen the landlord move from someone who might live on site
to someone who has money to pay a property manager to manager their portfolio
of properties. Your super these days is as likely to be an underpaid worker as
anyone living on site.

All this tech is doing is further solidifying the powers of the landlord over
the tenant, increasing the surveillance of tenants, and normalizing
surveillance culture. I'm surprised to see it supported on HN of all places,
which is usually very privacy oriented.

Edit: To not just be negative, let me present some positive alternatives for
discussion:

* Housing cooperatives -- Tenants can collectively own the building they live in, and decide as a community what technology works for them

* Tenants unions -- Tenants can collectively discuss what the property should be using, what the rules should be, and negotiate as a unit with their landlord.

~~~
leetcrew
> Housing should not be a commodity at all.

what do you mean by this exactly? "commodity" usually means a fungible good
(ie, one where individual units are interchangeable), which housing is
certainly not (if you think it is, I have an old trailer that I would gladly
trade you for your house). are you saying literally all housing should be
free?

~~~
Pfhreak
Housing should be priced by how effectively it houses people. The idea that
housing is a market good that people can use as an investment vehicle
undermines the actual value of having places for everyone to live at an
affordable rate.

I believe everyone should have access to free housing should they require it,
but that's different than housing should be free.

------
teejmya
On track towards Unauthorized Bread:
[https://craphound.com/category/radicalized-
full/](https://craphound.com/category/radicalized-full/)

------
rocketmaster1
A similar discussion around Alexa for landlords 2 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24450360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24450360)

