December 12, 2023 • 28 mins
When Maxwell Frost was elected to Congress, he struggled to find housing in DC. Today he advocates for stronger consumer protections and authors legislation to level the playing field between renters and landlords. Frost joins Data Nation along with Catherine D’Ignazio, an Urban Science and Planning professor at MIT, to talk about the challenges renters and home buyers face, how algorithmic technology perpetuates discrimination, and the importance of understanding where data comes from and who benefits from usi
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[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hello.
And welcome to DataNation, a podcast
from MIT's Institute forData Systems and Society.
I'm Liberty Vittert.
And along with me is my cohostMunther Dahleh, the founding
director of MIT IDSS.
In this episode, weare talking about
the national affordablehousing crisis
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with US congressionalrepresentative Maxwell
Frost and MIT associateprofessor of urban planning
and science,Catherine D'Ignazio.
With high interest rates and lowinventory increasing competition
for housing, manypeople are struggling
to find a place to call home.
And any negative on ahousing application,
such as a low credit score,can eliminate a candidate.
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Representative Frostexperienced this directly.
And we asked himto share his story.
I want to go back to the timewhen the coverage was going on
about you not being able torent an apartment because
of your credit scores.
And we've talked a lot inthis podcast about technology
and credit scores.
So tell us aboutthat and tell us
how that impacted what you weredoing about housing these days.
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Yeah.
Well, I mean, it hada big impact on me.
And a lot of people don'trealize that, obviously, that's
what ended up making the newswhen I was first elected.
But I dealt withhousing insecurity
before that and during thecampaign because as a candidate,
you don't get paid.
So before I ran for office,I was the Organizing Director
at March For Our Lives.
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It's a nonprofit.
And I quit to run for office.
And a few months in, we hada rent hike freeze in Florida
that was then liftedduring the campaign.
And my rent went up.
I think it was like 30%, 33%.
I got a notice about that.
And my lease was upin about a month.
So I had a monthto figure that out
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and did not have enough moneyto stay, so I was priced out.
And for about two months, I washouseless during the campaign.
I took all the moneyin my savings account,
literally all ofmy savings account.
And I put it into anAirbnb for a month.
And I said, you knowwhat, I'll figure it out.
I need a place to sleep.
And I didn't figure itout after that month.
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And I spent that nextmonth couch surfing,
sleeping in my car, et cetera.
Just the rent wasjust too, high.
And the problem isn'tjust the rent being high.
And that was the problem withme moving to an apartment in DC
I hadn't been makingmy salary yet.
People don't realize thatas members of Congress,
you don't get paiduntil February.
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You get sworn in January 3.
You get elected November 6,or 8, or 7, whatever it is.
So that's actually severalmonths where you're just
not making any money.
But you're still expected tohave two households starting
in January in yourdistrict and wherever,
in DC or in Orlando is mine.
And so my problem was twofold.
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One, being able to afford rentand furniture and everything
like that.
But number two,which will actually
prove to be the hardest one, Icouldn't even get to number one,
because I kept gettingdenied from places.
And when I inquiredabout why they said
it was because ofmy credit score,
because of my credit history.
And during my campaign, I had torun up a lot of credit card debt
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to pay for medicine,food, my rent, et cetera,
because I wasn't working.
And it's unfortunatebecause this is just
a reality for so manypeople across the country.
We want to talk aboutyoung people especially
being able to accumulate wealthand get into home ownership.
But oftentimes, a precursor toownership is being able to rent.
And especially for young folkswho don't have a credit history
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or have bad credit, they'refinding that they're not
able to rent either.
So it creates abad situation where
you have a lot of youngfolks especially subletting,
figuring othersituations, et cetera.
Catherine, that bringsme to this question of,
what is the data reallyshowing that's happening now?
And where will this sort ofhousing crisis for young people
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be if we don't do anything,if nothing changes?
Yeah, I think that's whereRepresentative Frost's situation
is not uncommon right now.
And one of the thingsthat's happening--
or maybe one of the fundamentalproblems behind this
is that we have right now andthen historically also treated
housing as a commodity,something to be bought and sold
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rather than something thatis a right for all people.
And so when somethingis just pure commodity,
then that means everythingis dictated by the market.
And we are witnessingreally the failures
of what happens when you treatsomething as a purely market
phenomenon in the sense ofwhat Representative Frost just
described, but things likerental and purchase prices
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skyrocketing.
People's wages have not risenas fast as housing prices.
Both rental and ownership haverisen over the past decade.
So like, literally,people cannot afford.
They can't afford to rent.
And they can't afford to buy.
And that's not only, let'ssay, low-income people, people
who are really vulnerable.
It's a lot of middle-classpeople and middle-class
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families, young people, aswe're talking about here,
they can't even breakinto this market.
And so this means we have thesewaves of crises like foreclosure
crisis, eviction crisis,displacement crisis,
homelessness crisis.
And if you'reunhoused, as we know,
this connects to everyother thing in your life.
You can't do anything withouta stable place to live.
And then I think onthe alternate side
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of that is then we have theseactors in the market that
are folks like thecorporate landlords,
platforms like Airbnb, venturecapital, and hedge funds moving
into housing as seen asan investment vehicle
rather than a place forpeople to live, really
like a profit making endeavor.
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And then so what happensthen, the properties
get even more jackedup in terms of prices.
So it's like very much richget richer kind of model
while other people suffer.
But one of the things I wasvery excited to learn about
was RepresentativeFrost legislation,
the bill that you introduced,the End Junk Fees for Renters.
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This is what weneed in this space.
What we need is actuallygovernance in this space.
The market is failing us.
It's failing us.
The vast majority of us arebeing failed by the market.
And so this is whatwe need right now,
is we need better governancemodels that keep people in homes
and give them access to homes.
So I will segue exactly fromCatherine's statement here,
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Maxwell, and ask you aboutthat legislative and then
your efforts inthe public housing,
and not just the successstories but also the challenges
that you're goingagainst markets.
And so how is that working out?
Yeah, so this is the-- thankyou so much for bringing it up.
This is the End Junk Feesfor Renters Act, which is
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my third piece of legislation.
It's directly connected to whathappened with my housing story
in January.
And I just realizedI didn't fully
answer your question,which is how did that
impact the work we're doing?
And the way I did is when thatwent viral and everything,
we received likethousands and thousands
and thousands of emails,Facebook messages, DMs,
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mail of people tellingtheir own renting story
and a lot of people saying,hey, my cousin lives in DC
and has a couch, if youwant to crash on it.
So thank you toeveryone who made
amazing offers, but a lot ofstories and a lot of stories
in Florida.
And Florida's experiencing,like everywhere else--
in 2021, we experienced one ofthe worst hikes in the country
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as far as rent's concernedto where we were before.
And people are feeling it.
I mean, when Iknocked doors, this
is what peoplewant to talk about.
And it's not justrenters too, right.
This is like a holisticcrisis, especially in Florida.
We're having a propertyinsurance crisis right now where
people who have been owningtheir homes for a long time,
seniors, are now facing someserious problems because they're
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on a fixed income.
And a lot of them arenot even able to get
their houses insured anymore.
So it's not just about--
it is young people.
It's seniors.
It's what I'll callintermediate homeowners, which
are like families orlike young professionals.
It's a problem that's reallyimpacting everybody now.
But the End Junk Fees forRenters Act is simple.
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And what it does is, to whatCatherine was talking about,
it steps in where we feel likethe market has been failing
the country and consumers andwhere we feel like government
needs to step in to ensurethat we have good oversight
and regulation, which issomething that's really missing
in housing in general, butespecially in the renters market
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and especially inthe state of Florida.
We really don't have renters'rights in Florida, to be honest.
We lack that.
And so it does a fewdifferent things.
Number one, it cracksdown on junk fees
by banning applicationfees and screening fees,
things like that.
We believe that that is not aburden that a consumer should
have to take on.
Especially when youapply, you're usually
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not applying to one apartment.
You're usuallyapplying to several.
And it creates a burden.
Now, yes, a lot ofthese screening fees
sometimes are refundedwithin 7 to 14 business days.
Like, for instance, mine heretook a month to get back to me.
When we're talking aboutworking class families, people
who are having trouble, thatcould be dinner on the table
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or no dinner on the table,medicine or no medicine.
And so we don't think thatshould be a burden on consumers.
The other thing it does iscrack down on all these fees
that landlords charge you thatactually legally they already
have to providethat service to you.
Like when you move into anapartment, apartment complex,
there has to be a trash servicethat is operated by the complex.
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So people should not haveto pay $50, $60 a month
to throw the trashdown the chute
when legally that complex hasto take care of that process
anyway.
And there's a lot ofdifferent instances of this.
For instance, we actuallydid a lot of research
in the state ofFlorida and found
that there are a fewapartment complexes that
charge their tenants between $40and $60 every time they email,
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text, or call the landlord.
That should be illegal as well.
So it's really gettingin on these junk fees.
The other thing that itdoes is ban credit score
screening in theapplication process
as the end all be all here.
And I'm sure everyoneon this podcast
is very familiar withthe extensive research
into credit scoresand how it really
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is not a good indicator onwhether or not someone's
going to pay their rent.
Oftentimes we know thatthe primary way people
build their creditscore or tank it is
going to be via a credit card.
And oftentimes, when it comesdown to paying your rent
of where you live, medicine, andstuff like that versus whatever
purchases you madeon a credit card,
sometimes when your moneyisn't-- when you're living
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paycheck to paycheck andyou're not able to cover all
your bills, the first thingpeople are going to pay is
their rent.
98% of the time.
This is what everystudy shows us.
So credit scores are justnot a good determining factor
to figure out whethersomeone is worthy enough
to rent in your apartment.
And what it ends up being is aredlining to keep poor people,
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oftentimes people of color, awayfrom certain types of buildings.
And this would alsoban the ability
for people to advertise that ifyou have a certain credit score,
you should apply, et cetera.
So we are really excited aboutthis piece of legislation.
The last thing I'll say is,some folks have brought up,
well, what about won't thismake rent more expensive,
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because they'll just lump thefees into the overall rent cost?
OK, sure.
I mean if they do that, atleast we have transparency.
I mean, I just movedinto an apartment
that was listed in Orlando.
It's for my girlfriend.
I was listed at like $2,000,which is really good for like
a two, two in Orlando right now.
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And by the time we got all thepaperwork done and everything,
a week before, I found outabout another three junk
fees I had to pay thattotaled up at $300.
I mean, that's a completechange in the rent cost.
So it's about transparencyand about ensuring
that we have some regulationhere to protect consumers.
And we got to thinkfederally here
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because the fact of the matteris it's a lot of states.
It's just not cuttingit and especially
in a lot of these red states.
I think that's such an importantconcept, especially what
you said at the beginningabout how your story resonated
with so many Americansand how you got thousands
of emails and texts and DMs.
And I think thatreally brings us
to Catherine's firstbook, Data Feminism.
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And there was this criticalinsight behind the thesis
that understandingof emotion drives
the way we interpret data.
And so how is it thatdata isn't just data?
And how can this beaffecting Americans' mindset
around something asbasic and something
as emotional as where youlive and having a home?
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Sure.
Yeah, I think one of thethings we try to talk about
in Data Feminism isthat data are not
as neutral, quote unquote,neutral as we commonly
think that they are.
And this doesn't meanthey're not useful.
But it's importantto think about how we
make data in the first place.
So data are expensive.
They're expensive to collect,maintain, and analyze.
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So there's a kind ofimbalance of power
with who has the powerand the resources
really to collect such data andabout what, like, what do they
think is important to measure?
And then this is aphenomenon-- when
we don't measure allof the correct things,
this is a phenomenonwe call missing data.
So the missing dataare data that you
think would exist because theymeasure very important phenomena
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in the world.
So, for example, in thecase of housing in the US,
it would be like the--
you would think we have anational evictions database that
would help us understandvariable eviction
rates across different states.
But in fact, these are datasets that actually don't exist.
And my understanding is actuallyHUD is working on this right
now.
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So there's actuallyexploratory study
going on to potentiallycreate such a database.
So this is one phenomena.
We don't always havethe data that we
need to have inorder to understand
a problem structurallyand systematically.
But then secondly,there's also issues
of bias and discriminationwith data that are collected.
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And so the biasand discrimination
could be in the data set itself.
And I think that's areally important phenomenon
that Representative Frost waspointing out with credit scores,
for example.
The phenomenon in theworld is highly biased.
It's racialized.
Low income people also don'thave access to credit often.
And so it's a phenomenonin the world which
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is already discriminatory.
And then you measure that in adata set and use it as an input
into other systems, and itis going to discriminate.
It will be biased because thephenomenon itself is biased.
But then on theother hand, you also
have ways that dataare used, that can also
be very biased as well.
An example of thisin the housing space
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relates to credit scores.
But it's a little bit broader.
It's tenant screening services.
And so these are thesescreening services.
This became a wholecottage industry recently
where these are the backgroundchecks that landlords
run against tenants.
What they use astheir input data
sources are credit scores often.
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So it's really excitingto hear that those
would be like-- ifthis bill goes through,
it'd be amazing to havecredit scores be taken off
the table because so muchresearch has demonstrated
they're not a good indicator ofwhether people pay their rent.
But what credit screeningservices also use are evictions.
And they also usecriminal records.
And they scoop those upfrom public data sources
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like housing court records.
And then they put those intotheir predictive algorithm.
And then they use those todetermine whether or not
a particular tenant isrisky or not to rent to.
So what's the problem with that?
On the face of it,it sounds fine.
But evictions are highlyracialized in this country.
So a lot of sociologicalwork has shown how--
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and they're also gendered.
So I've shown how Black women inparticular disproportionately,
egregiously face evictions, notto mention that eviction laws,
depending on the state, arehighly variable, so tenants
are protected from evictionsmore in some states rather
than others.
And so that means that peopleliving in states with low tenant
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protections will get theseserial evictions filed
against them becauselandlords can just file them.
They can just belike, oh, that person
is one day late with their rent,I'm going to file an eviction.
And so it's used as atactic, even when it
doesn't result in an eviction.
And yet once that evictionrecord goes on their record,
that follows them.
That is something that evenif it wasn't even completed,
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it looks like an eviction inthese tenant screening services.
And so these arejust some of the ways
in which, again, theseservices that we think of like,
oh, background checks.
That sounds like a veryreasonable service.
But then when we actually peera little bit deeper into it,
into, what are those data?
What are the sourcesof those data?
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What are the structural biasesthat are represented there?
And then how are those beingwielded against tenants?
They are beingwielded in such a way
as to perpetuate a cycle ofdiscrimination and exclusion
from housing anddisproportionately
will be against low-incomepeople, people of color,
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and women of color,particularly when
we're talking about evictions.
And so this is a choice.
It's a political choice.
We don't have to letthese services reenact
and scale thattype of exclusion.
We can choose to not do that.
So yeah.
I guess it makes me wonder,maybe, OK, I'm a small business
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owner, Maxwell.
I have a couple apartmentsI'm renting out.
Maybe I could believe, OK, thecredit score system is bad.
Somehow I've been convinced thatcredit score is not a good way
to figure out if someone'sa good tenant or not.
I'm convinced.
But what do I use?
How do we actuallymake this work
so that Americansbuy into this idea
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that we should eliminatethe credit score system
as a way to not screen people?
What do we use?
What works?
Yeah, there are many differentpoints that we can use here.
And here's the thing, too.
What the numbersshow is, number one,
most small mom and pop landlordsdon't charge junk fees,
to begin with.
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So that's an importantthing to keep in mind.
I mean, this whole thing aboutjunk fees has really popped up.
I mean, it's always beenaround, but even more recently,
as private equity has bought upevery apartment, every house,
anything you can thinkof, especially post-COVID.
So just mom and poplandlords usually
are not charging junkfees and really won't
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be severely impacted by this.
But what else can we look at?
I mean, I personally don'tbelieve credit score should
really exist.
It's made by anentity for an entity.
But something thatwe've pushed for
is like, how can we ensure thatif this is the number that we're
using, that if wetake a step back,
it's going to be holisticin what it includes?
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But we think that peopleshould take a step back,
especially landlords, andjust look at the full breadth
and depth of people.
And if you are going to usecredit scores at this point,
not using these third-partywebsites that Catherine
was talking about,these algorithms,
which essentially will screenan applicant using a credit
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score of a few other factors,too, and just spit out a result.
And the problem is many of thesehuge private equity companies,
there's no appealing processor anything like that.
I mean, you're going to sendin $50 to $80 to this website.
It's going to tellyou whether or not
you're going to beable to live in a home.
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And it's going to give youthe result, and that's it.
And a lot of time,they don't even
give you the reasoning for it.
And if you want the reasoning,you have to call some line
and wait.
So I think thefirst step here is
trying to get companies to stepaway from this process of using
these algorithms.
Before I was elected, Iused to work at the ACLU.
And something I learneda lot about working
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there is how racist and messedup a lot of these algorithms
are.
So there's are manydifferent factors
we can use to determinewhether or not someone is
going to pay their rent or not.
And a lot of us don'tbelieve that credit score
should be the end-all, be-all.
I want to say onemore thing real quick,
because I have a pretty nuancedopinion and position on how
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we're going to solve this.
And it's such a crisisright now that we
need every actor we canget at the table, not
every single actor.
There's a lot of bad actorsthat I think don't belong there.
But especially ourmore local developers
have a role here that theyneed to be included in.
And so my bill I thinkis really important.
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I hold to two truths that Ithink are really important.
I think we need very strongconsumer protections,
very strong consumerprotections because I
believe, like Catherine said,that housing is a human right.
So if that's yourfoundation, it helps set up
the type of legislationyou want to introduce
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and that you want tosupport to protect people
for their right,their human right.
I also believe that eventhough the market has failed
us, these protections,coupled with the ability
to give the localmarket the opportunity
to build more housing, I thinkis also important and not
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just build housing becausehousing is being built.
But for instance, partof the problem in Florida
is our population is rising.
We have more peoplemoving to the state.
But we don't have--or housing is not
being built at the same level.
And this has to do with alot of different reasons.
I'm not going toblame one actor here.
I like the YIMBYgroups that talk
a lot aboutexclusionary zoning laws
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and the need to build moremixed-income housing and et
cetera.
And I'm on board withthat 110% This is the part
that when I'm meeting withour local realtors and folks,
they like this part.
And I'm like, all right, cool,we'll work together on this one.
Might not agree on rentstabilization, et cetera.
But I think that's important.
These things needto go hand in hand.
I think when these things gohand in hand, our realtors
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and landlords and developerscan make a living,
make a good living.
I believe people should beable to make a profit off
of something but notprofiteer off of something.
And what we're seeingis profiteering.
And so these thingshave to go hand in hand.
So I'm for getting rid ofexclusionary zoning laws.
I'm for moremixed-income housing
so people can livenear opportunity.
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I'm for these things, andI'm also for strict consumer
protections.
I think they haveto work together
to get where we want to get.
There's not going to be aworld where the United States
Congress passes somuch money that we just
build public housing foreveryone who needs it.
The public housing is important.
It needs to be, yes, expanded.
But it also needs to be improvedbecause public housing shouldn't
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equal a certain type of housing.
And we all know what that is.
So there's a battlethere to do that.
But at the same time, we also--
we can't just completelydismiss the market
is what I'm trying to say.
We have to try to reformhere and work with it
and make it work forour current world,
not the world of 50, 60years ago, which I think
is what it's stackedup to be right now.
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So either way, I just wantedto throw that in there
for anyone listening.
I do think the responsehere is holistic.
But oftentimes, there arecertain groups that just are--
groups of peoplethat want to focus
on one thing, which is fine.
Me as a legislator, I reallywant to talk about all of it.
Catherine, because therewas a lot of conversations
actually about the groups,this group and that group,
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I think there weremultidimensional, multiagent
problem when you about housing.
And you have repeatedly talkedabout identifying the who,
who is responsible, whois part of the team, who
is going to be benefiting,who is going to be harmed.
Give us an example in thissetting of this housing problem,
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maybe the rental, maybethe credit scores,
that gives a lot tothe different agents
that are involved andhow they all get to win,
or is there asystem for everybody
is a winner or everybodyis actually reasonably
participating in good faith?
So yeah, Lauren andI and Data Feminism,
we talk about thesewho questions.
And so for us,these are questions
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that we can ask that help usunderstand the kinds of power
relationships.
And here when we're talkingabout power relationships,
it's with respect todata and information.
And so when weask who questions,
it's about how do we analyzethese asymmetrical relationships
of information.
And if you look acrossthe whole sector,
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you'll see we havelots of algorithms.
We have the creditscoring algorithms.
We have tenantscreening algorithms.
We have what's beingincreasingly called proptech,
so like theseadvanced technologies
for like facial recognition,for accessing properties.
We have remote propertymanagement dashboards,
various kinds of networkedcameras and doorbells
and et cetera.
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So if we look across that wholespace of proptech innovation
and we say, who'sbenefiting from that?
It is by and large--
it is the landlords, andit's the property owners
in these cases.
And so why is it that thelandlords and the property
owners, they can know almosteverything about tenants,
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they can look at a tenant'swhole background history,
know everything about atenant and their services that
do that for verylow cost, basically,
whereas tenants can knowvery little about landlords?
They don't know a landlord'shistory of filing serial
evictions, evictingpeople unfairly,
whether or not theyfix stuff when stuff
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is broken in the apartment.
And so why aren't we buildingthose tools and technologies?
So where are the tools andtechnologies that actually
help tenants build power?
There are groups thatare trying to rectify
some of these asymmetriesof data and information
and technology.
And I'll just mentionone here, which
is very interesting fromthe activist space, which
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is the Anti-EvictionMapping Project.
They have various chapters.
But this one is out inOakland and San Francisco.
And one of thethings that they did
is they built this toolcalled the Evictorbook.
And so this is basicallya tool that allows tenants
to look up their landlord.
So prior to tryingto rent a property,
they can look up their landlord.
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And they could see allthese different aspects.
They could see, is thisperson a serial evictor?
How big is the company?
How many propertiesare they managing?
What have been other people'sexperiences with them?
So it's like aYelp for landlords.
So that's great.
But that's also inone specific city.
And so this is whyI think it's back
to the question of governance.
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So how do we protecttenant information
from being exploitedby landlords
and these new technologies butalso publicly disclose lots
more informationabout landlords?
And so this is where thingslike rental registries come in.
And those are happening againin a very piecemeal way.
But I really agree withRepresentative Frost
when he was talkingabout how we really
need this to operateat the federal level
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because if we don't, it'sgoing to be super piecemeal
being municipality bymunicipality or state by state.
And there's wide variabilityin the approaches
to how much we protecttenants' rights
on a state-by-state basis.
And my positionat least would be
that all tenants' rightsshould be protected
and that these asymmetriesof data and information
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should be first analyzedand then rectified
both through technologyand through legislation.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Thank you to RepresentativeMaxwell Frost and Professor
Catherine D'Ignazio.
And thank you for listening tothis month's episode of Data
(28:11):
Nation.
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(28:35):
(00:01):
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Hello.
And welcome to DataNation, a podcast
from MIT's Institute forData Systems and Society.
I'm Liberty Vittert.
And along with me is my cohostMunther Dahleh, the founding
director of MIT IDSS.
In this episode, weare talking about
the national affordablehousing crisis
(00:22):
with US congressionalrepresentative Maxwell
Frost and MIT associateprofessor of urban planning
and science,Catherine D'Ignazio.
With high interest rates and lowinventory increasing competition
for housing, manypeople are struggling
to find a place to call home.
And any negative on ahousing application,
such as a low credit score,can eliminate a candidate.
(00:43):
Representative Frostexperienced this directly.
And we asked himto share his story.
I want to go back to the timewhen the coverage was going on
about you not being able torent an apartment because
of your credit scores.
And we've talked a lot inthis podcast about technology
and credit scores.
So tell us aboutthat and tell us
how that impacted what you weredoing about housing these days.
(01:07):
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it hada big impact on me.
And a lot of people don'trealize that, obviously, that's
what ended up making the newswhen I was first elected.
But I dealt withhousing insecurity
before that and during thecampaign because as a candidate,
you don't get paid.
So before I ran for office,I was the Organizing Director
at March For Our Lives.
(01:28):
It's a nonprofit.
And I quit to run for office.
And a few months in, we hada rent hike freeze in Florida
that was then liftedduring the campaign.
And my rent went up.
I think it was like 30%, 33%.
I got a notice about that.
And my lease was upin about a month.
So I had a monthto figure that out
(01:49):
and did not have enough moneyto stay, so I was priced out.
And for about two months, I washouseless during the campaign.
I took all the moneyin my savings account,
literally all ofmy savings account.
And I put it into anAirbnb for a month.
And I said, you knowwhat, I'll figure it out.
I need a place to sleep.
And I didn't figure itout after that month.
(02:11):
And I spent that nextmonth couch surfing,
sleeping in my car, et cetera.
Just the rent wasjust too, high.
And the problem isn'tjust the rent being high.
And that was the problem withme moving to an apartment in DC
I hadn't been makingmy salary yet.
People don't realize thatas members of Congress,
you don't get paiduntil February.
(02:32):
You get sworn in January 3.
You get elected November 6,or 8, or 7, whatever it is.
So that's actually severalmonths where you're just
not making any money.
But you're still expected tohave two households starting
in January in yourdistrict and wherever,
in DC or in Orlando is mine.
And so my problem was twofold.
(02:54):
One, being able to afford rentand furniture and everything
like that.
But number two,which will actually
prove to be the hardest one, Icouldn't even get to number one,
because I kept gettingdenied from places.
And when I inquiredabout why they said
it was because ofmy credit score,
because of my credit history.
And during my campaign, I had torun up a lot of credit card debt
(03:16):
to pay for medicine,food, my rent, et cetera,
because I wasn't working.
And it's unfortunatebecause this is just
a reality for so manypeople across the country.
We want to talk aboutyoung people especially
being able to accumulate wealthand get into home ownership.
But oftentimes, a precursor toownership is being able to rent.
And especially for young folkswho don't have a credit history
(03:38):
or have bad credit, they'refinding that they're not
able to rent either.
So it creates abad situation where
you have a lot of youngfolks especially subletting,
figuring othersituations, et cetera.
Catherine, that bringsme to this question of,
what is the data reallyshowing that's happening now?
And where will this sort ofhousing crisis for young people
(04:01):
be if we don't do anything,if nothing changes?
Yeah, I think that's whereRepresentative Frost's situation
is not uncommon right now.
And one of the thingsthat's happening--
or maybe one of the fundamentalproblems behind this
is that we have right now andthen historically also treated
housing as a commodity,something to be bought and sold
(04:22):
rather than something thatis a right for all people.
And so when somethingis just pure commodity,
then that means everythingis dictated by the market.
And we are witnessingreally the failures
of what happens when you treatsomething as a purely market
phenomenon in the sense ofwhat Representative Frost just
described, but things likerental and purchase prices
(04:45):
skyrocketing.
People's wages have not risenas fast as housing prices.
Both rental and ownership haverisen over the past decade.
So like, literally,people cannot afford.
They can't afford to rent.
And they can't afford to buy.
And that's not only, let'ssay, low-income people, people
who are really vulnerable.
It's a lot of middle-classpeople and middle-class
(05:06):
families, young people, aswe're talking about here,
they can't even breakinto this market.
And so this means we have thesewaves of crises like foreclosure
crisis, eviction crisis,displacement crisis,
homelessness crisis.
And if you'reunhoused, as we know,
this connects to everyother thing in your life.
You can't do anything withouta stable place to live.
And then I think onthe alternate side
(05:29):
of that is then we have theseactors in the market that
are folks like thecorporate landlords,
platforms like Airbnb, venturecapital, and hedge funds moving
into housing as seen asan investment vehicle
rather than a place forpeople to live, really
like a profit making endeavor.
(05:50):
And then so what happensthen, the properties
get even more jackedup in terms of prices.
So it's like very much richget richer kind of model
while other people suffer.
But one of the things I wasvery excited to learn about
was RepresentativeFrost legislation,
the bill that you introduced,the End Junk Fees for Renters.
(06:10):
This is what weneed in this space.
What we need is actuallygovernance in this space.
The market is failing us.
It's failing us.
The vast majority of us arebeing failed by the market.
And so this is whatwe need right now,
is we need better governancemodels that keep people in homes
and give them access to homes.
So I will segue exactly fromCatherine's statement here,
(06:33):
Maxwell, and ask you aboutthat legislative and then
your efforts inthe public housing,
and not just the successstories but also the challenges
that you're goingagainst markets.
And so how is that working out?
Yeah, so this is the-- thankyou so much for bringing it up.
This is the End Junk Feesfor Renters Act, which is
(06:53):
my third piece of legislation.
It's directly connected to whathappened with my housing story
in January.
And I just realizedI didn't fully
answer your question,which is how did that
impact the work we're doing?
And the way I did is when thatwent viral and everything,
we received likethousands and thousands
and thousands of emails,Facebook messages, DMs,
(07:15):
mail of people tellingtheir own renting story
and a lot of people saying,hey, my cousin lives in DC
and has a couch, if youwant to crash on it.
So thank you toeveryone who made
amazing offers, but a lot ofstories and a lot of stories
in Florida.
And Florida's experiencing,like everywhere else--
in 2021, we experienced one ofthe worst hikes in the country
(07:37):
as far as rent's concernedto where we were before.
And people are feeling it.
I mean, when Iknocked doors, this
is what peoplewant to talk about.
And it's not justrenters too, right.
This is like a holisticcrisis, especially in Florida.
We're having a propertyinsurance crisis right now where
people who have been owningtheir homes for a long time,
seniors, are now facing someserious problems because they're
(07:59):
on a fixed income.
And a lot of them arenot even able to get
their houses insured anymore.
So it's not just about--
it is young people.
It's seniors.
It's what I'll callintermediate homeowners, which
are like families orlike young professionals.
It's a problem that's reallyimpacting everybody now.
But the End Junk Fees forRenters Act is simple.
(08:20):
And what it does is, to whatCatherine was talking about,
it steps in where we feel likethe market has been failing
the country and consumers andwhere we feel like government
needs to step in to ensurethat we have good oversight
and regulation, which issomething that's really missing
in housing in general, butespecially in the renters market
(08:42):
and especially inthe state of Florida.
We really don't have renters'rights in Florida, to be honest.
We lack that.
And so it does a fewdifferent things.
Number one, it cracksdown on junk fees
by banning applicationfees and screening fees,
things like that.
We believe that that is not aburden that a consumer should
have to take on.
Especially when youapply, you're usually
(09:04):
not applying to one apartment.
You're usuallyapplying to several.
And it creates a burden.
Now, yes, a lot ofthese screening fees
sometimes are refundedwithin 7 to 14 business days.
Like, for instance, mine heretook a month to get back to me.
When we're talking aboutworking class families, people
who are having trouble, thatcould be dinner on the table
(09:24):
or no dinner on the table,medicine or no medicine.
And so we don't think thatshould be a burden on consumers.
The other thing it does iscrack down on all these fees
that landlords charge you thatactually legally they already
have to providethat service to you.
Like when you move into anapartment, apartment complex,
there has to be a trash servicethat is operated by the complex.
(09:48):
So people should not haveto pay $50, $60 a month
to throw the trashdown the chute
when legally that complex hasto take care of that process
anyway.
And there's a lot ofdifferent instances of this.
For instance, we actuallydid a lot of research
in the state ofFlorida and found
that there are a fewapartment complexes that
charge their tenants between $40and $60 every time they email,
(10:12):
text, or call the landlord.
That should be illegal as well.
So it's really gettingin on these junk fees.
The other thing that itdoes is ban credit score
screening in theapplication process
as the end all be all here.
And I'm sure everyoneon this podcast
is very familiar withthe extensive research
into credit scoresand how it really
(10:33):
is not a good indicator onwhether or not someone's
going to pay their rent.
Oftentimes we know thatthe primary way people
build their creditscore or tank it is
going to be via a credit card.
And oftentimes, when it comesdown to paying your rent
of where you live, medicine, andstuff like that versus whatever
purchases you madeon a credit card,
sometimes when your moneyisn't-- when you're living
(10:55):
paycheck to paycheck andyou're not able to cover all
your bills, the first thingpeople are going to pay is
their rent.
98% of the time.
This is what everystudy shows us.
So credit scores are justnot a good determining factor
to figure out whethersomeone is worthy enough
to rent in your apartment.
And what it ends up being is aredlining to keep poor people,
(11:17):
oftentimes people of color, awayfrom certain types of buildings.
And this would alsoban the ability
for people to advertise that ifyou have a certain credit score,
you should apply, et cetera.
So we are really excited aboutthis piece of legislation.
The last thing I'll say is,some folks have brought up,
well, what about won't thismake rent more expensive,
(11:38):
because they'll just lump thefees into the overall rent cost?
OK, sure.
I mean if they do that, atleast we have transparency.
I mean, I just movedinto an apartment
that was listed in Orlando.
It's for my girlfriend.
I was listed at like $2,000,which is really good for like
a two, two in Orlando right now.
(11:58):
And by the time we got all thepaperwork done and everything,
a week before, I found outabout another three junk
fees I had to pay thattotaled up at $300.
I mean, that's a completechange in the rent cost.
So it's about transparencyand about ensuring
that we have some regulationhere to protect consumers.
And we got to thinkfederally here
(12:18):
because the fact of the matteris it's a lot of states.
It's just not cuttingit and especially
in a lot of these red states.
I think that's such an importantconcept, especially what
you said at the beginningabout how your story resonated
with so many Americansand how you got thousands
of emails and texts and DMs.
And I think thatreally brings us
to Catherine's firstbook, Data Feminism.
(12:39):
And there was this criticalinsight behind the thesis
that understandingof emotion drives
the way we interpret data.
And so how is it thatdata isn't just data?
And how can this beaffecting Americans' mindset
around something asbasic and something
as emotional as where youlive and having a home?
(13:00):
Sure.
Yeah, I think one of thethings we try to talk about
in Data Feminism isthat data are not
as neutral, quote unquote,neutral as we commonly
think that they are.
And this doesn't meanthey're not useful.
But it's importantto think about how we
make data in the first place.
So data are expensive.
They're expensive to collect,maintain, and analyze.
(13:22):
So there's a kind ofimbalance of power
with who has the powerand the resources
really to collect such data andabout what, like, what do they
think is important to measure?
And then this is aphenomenon-- when
we don't measure allof the correct things,
this is a phenomenonwe call missing data.
So the missing dataare data that you
think would exist because theymeasure very important phenomena
(13:45):
in the world.
So, for example, in thecase of housing in the US,
it would be like the--
you would think we have anational evictions database that
would help us understandvariable eviction
rates across different states.
But in fact, these are datasets that actually don't exist.
And my understanding is actuallyHUD is working on this right
now.
(14:05):
So there's actuallyexploratory study
going on to potentiallycreate such a database.
So this is one phenomena.
We don't always havethe data that we
need to have inorder to understand
a problem structurallyand systematically.
But then secondly,there's also issues
of bias and discriminationwith data that are collected.
(14:25):
And so the biasand discrimination
could be in the data set itself.
And I think that's areally important phenomenon
that Representative Frost waspointing out with credit scores,
for example.
The phenomenon in theworld is highly biased.
It's racialized.
Low income people also don'thave access to credit often.
And so it's a phenomenonin the world which
(14:46):
is already discriminatory.
And then you measure that in adata set and use it as an input
into other systems, and itis going to discriminate.
It will be biased because thephenomenon itself is biased.
But then on theother hand, you also
have ways that dataare used, that can also
be very biased as well.
An example of thisin the housing space
(15:06):
relates to credit scores.
But it's a little bit broader.
It's tenant screening services.
And so these are thesescreening services.
This became a wholecottage industry recently
where these are the backgroundchecks that landlords
run against tenants.
What they use astheir input data
sources are credit scores often.
(15:27):
So it's really excitingto hear that those
would be like-- ifthis bill goes through,
it'd be amazing to havecredit scores be taken off
the table because so muchresearch has demonstrated
they're not a good indicator ofwhether people pay their rent.
But what credit screeningservices also use are evictions.
And they also usecriminal records.
And they scoop those upfrom public data sources
(15:48):
like housing court records.
And then they put those intotheir predictive algorithm.
And then they use those todetermine whether or not
a particular tenant isrisky or not to rent to.
So what's the problem with that?
On the face of it,it sounds fine.
But evictions are highlyracialized in this country.
So a lot of sociologicalwork has shown how--
(16:09):
and they're also gendered.
So I've shown how Black women inparticular disproportionately,
egregiously face evictions, notto mention that eviction laws,
depending on the state, arehighly variable, so tenants
are protected from evictionsmore in some states rather
than others.
And so that means that peopleliving in states with low tenant
(16:31):
protections will get theseserial evictions filed
against them becauselandlords can just file them.
They can just belike, oh, that person
is one day late with their rent,I'm going to file an eviction.
And so it's used as atactic, even when it
doesn't result in an eviction.
And yet once that evictionrecord goes on their record,
that follows them.
That is something that evenif it wasn't even completed,
(16:52):
it looks like an eviction inthese tenant screening services.
And so these arejust some of the ways
in which, again, theseservices that we think of like,
oh, background checks.
That sounds like a veryreasonable service.
But then when we actually peera little bit deeper into it,
into, what are those data?
What are the sourcesof those data?
(17:13):
What are the structural biasesthat are represented there?
And then how are those beingwielded against tenants?
They are beingwielded in such a way
as to perpetuate a cycle ofdiscrimination and exclusion
from housing anddisproportionately
will be against low-incomepeople, people of color,
(17:33):
and women of color,particularly when
we're talking about evictions.
And so this is a choice.
It's a political choice.
We don't have to letthese services reenact
and scale thattype of exclusion.
We can choose to not do that.
So yeah.
I guess it makes me wonder,maybe, OK, I'm a small business
(17:55):
owner, Maxwell.
I have a couple apartmentsI'm renting out.
Maybe I could believe, OK, thecredit score system is bad.
Somehow I've been convinced thatcredit score is not a good way
to figure out if someone'sa good tenant or not.
I'm convinced.
But what do I use?
How do we actuallymake this work
so that Americansbuy into this idea
(18:16):
that we should eliminatethe credit score system
as a way to not screen people?
What do we use?
What works?
Yeah, there are many differentpoints that we can use here.
And here's the thing, too.
What the numbersshow is, number one,
most small mom and pop landlordsdon't charge junk fees,
to begin with.
(18:36):
So that's an importantthing to keep in mind.
I mean, this whole thing aboutjunk fees has really popped up.
I mean, it's always beenaround, but even more recently,
as private equity has bought upevery apartment, every house,
anything you can thinkof, especially post-COVID.
So just mom and poplandlords usually
are not charging junkfees and really won't
(18:57):
be severely impacted by this.
But what else can we look at?
I mean, I personally don'tbelieve credit score should
really exist.
It's made by anentity for an entity.
But something thatwe've pushed for
is like, how can we ensure thatif this is the number that we're
using, that if wetake a step back,
it's going to be holisticin what it includes?
(19:20):
But we think that peopleshould take a step back,
especially landlords, andjust look at the full breadth
and depth of people.
And if you are going to usecredit scores at this point,
not using these third-partywebsites that Catherine
was talking about,these algorithms,
which essentially will screenan applicant using a credit
(19:41):
score of a few other factors,too, and just spit out a result.
And the problem is many of thesehuge private equity companies,
there's no appealing processor anything like that.
I mean, you're going to sendin $50 to $80 to this website.
It's going to tellyou whether or not
you're going to beable to live in a home.
(20:02):
And it's going to give youthe result, and that's it.
And a lot of time,they don't even
give you the reasoning for it.
And if you want the reasoning,you have to call some line
and wait.
So I think thefirst step here is
trying to get companies to stepaway from this process of using
these algorithms.
Before I was elected, Iused to work at the ACLU.
And something I learneda lot about working
(20:23):
there is how racist and messedup a lot of these algorithms
are.
So there's are manydifferent factors
we can use to determinewhether or not someone is
going to pay their rent or not.
And a lot of us don'tbelieve that credit score
should be the end-all, be-all.
I want to say onemore thing real quick,
because I have a pretty nuancedopinion and position on how
(20:48):
we're going to solve this.
And it's such a crisisright now that we
need every actor we canget at the table, not
every single actor.
There's a lot of bad actorsthat I think don't belong there.
But especially ourmore local developers
have a role here that theyneed to be included in.
And so my bill I thinkis really important.
(21:09):
I hold to two truths that Ithink are really important.
I think we need very strongconsumer protections,
very strong consumerprotections because I
believe, like Catherine said,that housing is a human right.
So if that's yourfoundation, it helps set up
the type of legislationyou want to introduce
(21:29):
and that you want tosupport to protect people
for their right,their human right.
I also believe that eventhough the market has failed
us, these protections,coupled with the ability
to give the localmarket the opportunity
to build more housing, I thinkis also important and not
(21:50):
just build housing becausehousing is being built.
But for instance, partof the problem in Florida
is our population is rising.
We have more peoplemoving to the state.
But we don't have--or housing is not
being built at the same level.
And this has to do with alot of different reasons.
I'm not going toblame one actor here.
I like the YIMBYgroups that talk
a lot aboutexclusionary zoning laws
(22:12):
and the need to build moremixed-income housing and et
cetera.
And I'm on board withthat 110% This is the part
that when I'm meeting withour local realtors and folks,
they like this part.
And I'm like, all right, cool,we'll work together on this one.
Might not agree on rentstabilization, et cetera.
But I think that's important.
These things needto go hand in hand.
I think when these things gohand in hand, our realtors
(22:33):
and landlords and developerscan make a living,
make a good living.
I believe people should beable to make a profit off
of something but notprofiteer off of something.
And what we're seeingis profiteering.
And so these thingshave to go hand in hand.
So I'm for getting rid ofexclusionary zoning laws.
I'm for moremixed-income housing
so people can livenear opportunity.
(22:54):
I'm for these things, andI'm also for strict consumer
protections.
I think they haveto work together
to get where we want to get.
There's not going to be aworld where the United States
Congress passes somuch money that we just
build public housing foreveryone who needs it.
The public housing is important.
It needs to be, yes, expanded.
But it also needs to be improvedbecause public housing shouldn't
(23:16):
equal a certain type of housing.
And we all know what that is.
So there's a battlethere to do that.
But at the same time, we also--
we can't just completelydismiss the market
is what I'm trying to say.
We have to try to reformhere and work with it
and make it work forour current world,
not the world of 50, 60years ago, which I think
is what it's stackedup to be right now.
(23:37):
So either way, I just wantedto throw that in there
for anyone listening.
I do think the responsehere is holistic.
But oftentimes, there arecertain groups that just are--
groups of peoplethat want to focus
on one thing, which is fine.
Me as a legislator, I reallywant to talk about all of it.
Catherine, because therewas a lot of conversations
actually about the groups,this group and that group,
(23:58):
I think there weremultidimensional, multiagent
problem when you about housing.
And you have repeatedly talkedabout identifying the who,
who is responsible, whois part of the team, who
is going to be benefiting,who is going to be harmed.
Give us an example in thissetting of this housing problem,
(24:18):
maybe the rental, maybethe credit scores,
that gives a lot tothe different agents
that are involved andhow they all get to win,
or is there asystem for everybody
is a winner or everybodyis actually reasonably
participating in good faith?
So yeah, Lauren andI and Data Feminism,
we talk about thesewho questions.
And so for us,these are questions
(24:41):
that we can ask that help usunderstand the kinds of power
relationships.
And here when we're talkingabout power relationships,
it's with respect todata and information.
And so when weask who questions,
it's about how do we analyzethese asymmetrical relationships
of information.
And if you look acrossthe whole sector,
(25:02):
you'll see we havelots of algorithms.
We have the creditscoring algorithms.
We have tenantscreening algorithms.
We have what's beingincreasingly called proptech,
so like theseadvanced technologies
for like facial recognition,for accessing properties.
We have remote propertymanagement dashboards,
various kinds of networkedcameras and doorbells
and et cetera.
(25:23):
So if we look across that wholespace of proptech innovation
and we say, who'sbenefiting from that?
It is by and large--
it is the landlords, andit's the property owners
in these cases.
And so why is it that thelandlords and the property
owners, they can know almosteverything about tenants,
(25:45):
they can look at a tenant'swhole background history,
know everything about atenant and their services that
do that for verylow cost, basically,
whereas tenants can knowvery little about landlords?
They don't know a landlord'shistory of filing serial
evictions, evictingpeople unfairly,
whether or not theyfix stuff when stuff
(26:06):
is broken in the apartment.
And so why aren't we buildingthose tools and technologies?
So where are the tools andtechnologies that actually
help tenants build power?
There are groups thatare trying to rectify
some of these asymmetriesof data and information
and technology.
And I'll just mentionone here, which
is very interesting fromthe activist space, which
(26:27):
is the Anti-EvictionMapping Project.
They have various chapters.
But this one is out inOakland and San Francisco.
And one of thethings that they did
is they built this toolcalled the Evictorbook.
And so this is basicallya tool that allows tenants
to look up their landlord.
So prior to tryingto rent a property,
they can look up their landlord.
(26:48):
And they could see allthese different aspects.
They could see, is thisperson a serial evictor?
How big is the company?
How many propertiesare they managing?
What have been other people'sexperiences with them?
So it's like aYelp for landlords.
So that's great.
But that's also inone specific city.
And so this is whyI think it's back
to the question of governance.
(27:08):
So how do we protecttenant information
from being exploitedby landlords
and these new technologies butalso publicly disclose lots
more informationabout landlords?
And so this is where thingslike rental registries come in.
And those are happening againin a very piecemeal way.
But I really agree withRepresentative Frost
when he was talkingabout how we really
need this to operateat the federal level
(27:30):
because if we don't, it'sgoing to be super piecemeal
being municipality bymunicipality or state by state.
And there's wide variabilityin the approaches
to how much we protecttenants' rights
on a state-by-state basis.
And my positionat least would be
that all tenants' rightsshould be protected
and that these asymmetriesof data and information
(27:51):
should be first analyzedand then rectified
both through technologyand through legislation.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Thank you to RepresentativeMaxwell Frost and Professor
Catherine D'Ignazio.
And thank you for listening tothis month's episode of Data
(28:11):
Nation.
You can get more informationand listen to previous episodes
at our website,idss.mit.edu or follow us
on X and Instagram @mitidss.
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Thanks for listeningto Data Nation
from the MIT Institute ofData Systems and Society.
(28:35):
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