Rylan Maksoud signed a lease for Ion Austin's cheapest floor plan. But the West Campus tower's management told him that the floor plan was sold out. They gave Maksoud two options: Pay more for a different unit, or find a new apartment.
signed a lease in October 2017 for's cheapest floor plan for the following year. But come Christmas, the West Campus tower's management told him that the floor plan was sold out. They gave Maksoud two options: Pay more for a different unit, or find a new apartment.After settling for $4,500, Maksoud learned from previous Ion renters that his experience was not caused by a"software malfunction," as the property management company insisted.
"The problem is that they have all this data," Maksoud said."They know exactly how much they can squeeze you [in rent], and they do." Now a University of Texas law student, Maksoud advocates at City Hall against the housing crisis.– of Americans say housing affordability is a major problem in their communities, according to a 2021survey.
"Whenever you program an algorithm to do something, you have to ask a very specific question. You have to feed it data to train on, and [this data] might be sourced from a bad source that has biases," said Andrew D. Selbst, a postdoctoral scholar at, a New York-based nonprofit. Predictive analytics draw on data from potential tenants' social media profiles, criminal history, credit scores, and other personal information.
What might solutions involve? Maksoud said his work focuses on electing government officials who will address the housing crisis and on spreading general awareness across Austin. Selbst said transparency into choices made in designing algorithms, along with specific legislation, could help."It's hard," Selbst said."You'd also need community input into what the algorithm should be allowed to do and what counts as discrimination. None of that has been done yet.
Humber suggests that renters should be able to defend themselves against poor credit scores and that people experiencing evictions have greater right to counsel; she also supports an education campaign about the disparate impacts of tenant-screening algorithms."A lot of people that are harmed by these technologies don't even know the prevalence of these tools," Humber said.
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
PolitiFact - Claim vastly overstates government’s spending on TSA’s gender-neutral screening technologyIn a viral video, a man intentionally identified himself as a woman at a TSA checkpoint to test what he said was the “couple hundred million dollars” TSA spent on gender-neutral screening technology. TSA spent exponentially less than that.
Read more »
AMC sells stake in Saudi Arabia joint venture, shifts to licensing partnershipAlmost five years after AMC began screening movies in Saudi Arabia, the movie theater chain and meme stock darling is selling its stake in its joint venture in the kingdom.
Read more »
Child welfare algorithm faces Justice Department scrutinySeveral civil rights complaints were filed in the fall about the Allegheny Family Screening Tool, which is used to help social workers decide which families to investigate, AP has learned.
Read more »
Tom Brady hits the red carpet with his '80 for Brady' co-starsTom Brady had four Hollywood legends by his side for the big event — his co-stars from the sports-comedy film '80 for Brady,' Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Lily Tomlin and Rita Moreno.
Read more »
Pamela Anderson Reveals How 'Borat' Made Kid Rock Lose His Damn MindIn an exclusive excerpt from her memoir Love, Pamela, the icon opens up about a screening of Borat that went horribly wrong and led to her split from Kid Rock, a.k.a. Bob Ritchie
Read more »
Harvard Film Archive celebrates filmmaker Joyce Chopra with mini-retrospectiveThe director, who co-founded what is now Cambridge's Club Passim over 60 years ago, returns to Harvard Square this weekend for a screening of her seminal 1972 documentary short “Joyce at 34,” followed by a new 4K restoration of her 1985 feature debut “Smooth Talk.”
Read more »