The Technological Automation Of Landlordism

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BIO:
Our speaker this month is Dr. Erin McElroy. Dr. McElroy is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Washington where they run the Anti-Eviction Lab, having previously taught in the Department of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. McElroy’s work focuses upon intersections of gentrification, technology, and racial capitalism in the US and in Romania, alongside housing justice organizing and transnational solidarities. McElroy is cofounder of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project—a data visualization, counter-cartography, and digital media collective that produces tools, maps, reports, murals, zines, oral histories, and more to further the work of housing justice. In addition to co-editing the Radical Housing Journal, McElroy additionally runs Landlord Tech Watch—a platform dedicated to producing collective knowledge about landlord-driven data grabbing techniques.

TALK SUMMARY:
In this talk, Erin McElroy will share more about collective research that they have been a part of over the last several years to study landlord technologies, or the surveillance and speculation platforms, databases, and systems that landlords and property managers use to automate landlordism. Many of these technologies, from biometric building access cameras to tenant screening algorithms, reproduce contexts of racial surveillance, housing precarity, and carcerality, essentially automating gentrification. In addition to offering a contextualization of this landscape, McElroy will share more about Landlord Tech Watch efforts to product tools and popular educational materials on the harms associated with landlord technologies in coalition with the Anti-Eviction Lab, [people.power.media], the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, and the
OceanHill-Brownsville Alliance.

HOW TO ATTEND:
Capital Factory is located at 701 Brazos Street, on the 1st floor of the Omni Hotel. We are in the Devvie meeting room. To locate Devvie, locate Capital Factory's main event room off the Omni lobby, Voltron, Suite 150. Once inside, there should be someone at the desk to direct you to our meetup, but, if no one is there, proceed to the left past the kitchen and down the hallway, Devvie is right around the corner. You may also message us on this event or message us at @EFFaustin on Twitter or @effaustin on Mastodon if you are having trouble finding us. Please note that the room will be locked and EFF-Austin will not have access until 10-15 minutes before 7:00pm CST. We will try to have someone in the Omni lobby earlier than that in front of the Voltron doors to greet you if you arrive early, but otherwise just wait in the lobby until you are let in.

Talk will be livestreamed at https://www.youtube.com/user/austintechlive and will later be archived at https://www.youtube.com/user/effaustin. Questions for the speaker from virtual attendees may be submitted via the Youtube livestream chat, our Twitter account, @EFFaustin, or our Mastodon account, @effaustin.

Parking for the Omni Garage can be validated at the Capital Factory front desk inside room Voltron, Suite 150, reducing the cost to $8. If no one is at the desk, check with EFF-Austin meetup organizers, we can provide you with one. Attendees must park after 5pm and leave before 10pm to receive the discount, otherwise they will be charged full price, which is $3.25 for every 30 minutes. Affordable street park is also available nearby. Details: https://capitalfactory.com/parking/

AFTER PARTY:
Join us for the discussion from 7:00PM-9:00PM, followed by drinks and camaraderie from 9:00PM-10:00PM in the Omni Hotel lobby.