When Algorithms Become Landlords — Platforms, Data and AI

A tenancy application is scored by an algorithm. A rent is set by software reading the market in real time. A landlord oversees thousands of scattered homes from a single dashboard, while the home itself quietly logs movement, temperature and presence. Across all of these, housing is increasingly mediated — and governed — by data, platforms and automated systems. These are not neutral conveniences: the tools that promise efficiency also concentrate power, extend surveillance into domestic life, and fold older inequalities of class, race and place into code that is harder to see and harder to contest. In this context, this session asks what the datafication and platformisation of housing are doing to the social relations of home. Who is sorted in or out, and by what logic? Which new actors — platforms, data brokers, PropTech firms and platform-based investors — now govern housing from outside the familiar triangle of state, market and household? And where do residents push back? We welcome both empirical and theoretical contributions that examine the growing role of digital technologies in housing, from algorithmic screening, scoring, and discrimination to automated property valuation and rent-setting, short-term rental and listing platforms, smart homes and domestic surveillance, the datafication of social housing and welfare systems, and the methodological challenges of studying systems designed to remain opaque. We particularly encourage submissions that explore how digital transformation shapes housing justice across both the Global North and the Global South.