MANIFESTO: We Are Not Just Data—We Are People Who Need Homes
To the algorithms that judge us, the investors who never see us, and the system that forgot we exist—
The Invisible Web They Built Around Us
You think you're just applying for an apartment. But here's what's really happening:
The moment you click "submit," your data doesn't just go to one landlord. It feeds into a surveillance ecosystem most people never see:
RentSpree, Apartments.com, Zillow—they don't just show listings. They harvest your search patterns, income guesses, and desperation levels, then sell that intelligence to the highest bidder.
CoreLogic, TransUnion, LexisNexis—the real gatekeepers. They've built secret files on you that combine your credit, criminal background, eviction history, employment gaps, medical debt, even your social media activity. You've never seen these files. You can't correct them. But they determine whether you get housing.
AI screening tools like Saferent and Tenant Turner—algorithms trained on decades of discriminatory housing practices, now making split-second decisions about your worthiness. They flag "risky" names, zip codes, work histories. The bias is baked in, but it's hidden behind the language of "objective risk assessment."
Meanwhile, the actual decision-makers are nowhere to be found:
Your "landlord" is often a shell company owned by Blackstone, Invitation Homes, Progress Residential—Wall Street giants that own hundreds of thousands of single-family homes, managed by algorithms, not humans.
Your rent is set by RentSpree's AI pricing, not local market conditions. It analyzes your financial desperation in real-time and adjusts accordingly.
Your application is processed by offshore contractors who spend 90 seconds reviewing your entire life before clicking "approve" or "deny."
This isn't housing. This is human trafficking through data brokers.
We Are the Names Behind the Numbers
We are the teacher whose credit got destroyed by medical debt, now flagged as "high risk" by algorithms that don't understand cancer.
We are the veteran whose PTSD episodes show up as "gaps in employment history," automatically disqualifying us from homes near the VA hospital where we get care.
We are the single mother whose previous landlord's illegal eviction still haunts our record, even though we won in court—because tenant screening companies don't update their databases.
We are the essential worker whose irregular schedule gets interpreted as "income instability" by machines that were programmed by people who've never worked an hourly job.
We are the young professional whose student loans make us "debt-heavy," even though we're paying them responsibly—because the algorithm doesn't distinguish between responsibility and risk.
We are being erased by spreadsheets.
The Houses Are Watching, Too
That apartment you toured? It knows more about you than your friends do.
Smart locks track when you arrive and leave. Security cameras use facial recognition to build profiles. Wi-Fi networks log every device you connect. Property management apps monitor your complaint patterns, payment timing, even how often you contact the office.
This data gets packaged, sold, and used to determine your "tenant desirability score"—a number that follows you from lease to lease, city to city, getting worse with every minor infraction.
Late on rent due to a hospital bill? Marked as financially unreliable. Called maintenance twice in one month? Flagged as high-maintenance. Had friends over for a birthday party? Labeled as potential noise risk.
You're not just renting a home. You're living inside a data extraction operation.
The Bigger Picture They Don't Want You to See
This isn't just about housing. It's about algorithmic control of basic human needs.
The same companies screening your rental applications are also:
Determining your insurance rates (LexisNexis)
Influencing your job prospects (background check companies share data across industries)
Affecting your loan approvals (credit bureaus feed rental data to banks)
Shaping your neighborhood options (redlining 2.0, powered by "predictive analytics")
They've built a digital caste system where one bad month, one medical emergency, one youthful mistake creates a permanent underclass locked out of stable housing.
And at the top? Investors who've never seen the neighborhoods they're destroying. Foreign capital. Private equity. Algorithms buying houses faster than families can bid, then renting them back to us at prices set by surge-pricing software.
This Is Not Normal. This Is Not Inevitable.
A home is not a subscription service. A home is not a profit maximization experiment. A home is not a place to beta-test surveillance capitalism.
A home is where you become yourself. Where you heal. Where you build the life that makes everything else possible.
The Path Forward: Taking Back Human Agency
For Homeowners and Small Landlords
Stop outsourcing your humanity. Meet your tenants. Have conversations. Judge character, not credit scores. Build relationships that honor the sacred act of letting someone live in your space.
For Tenants and Housing Seekers
Demand transparency. Ask landlords: What screening company do you use? What data points do they consider? Can I see my file? Force them to confront the machinery they've put between you and housing.
For Communities
Build alternative systems. Create tenant unions that provide character references. Develop community-backed housing cooperatives. Support local landlords who reject algorithmic screening. Make housing a human right, not a commodity.
For Everyone
See the connections. Your housing struggles aren't personal failures—they're systemic design features. The same forces pricing you out of homes are extracting wealth from your labor, privatizing your healthcare, and commodifying your data.
This is bigger than housing. This is about whether humans or algorithms control the basic conditions of human life.
We Will Not Be Reduced
We are not risk scores. We are not behavioral patterns. We are not market segments.
We are people who laugh at dinner tables, who need quiet spaces to grieve, who dream in bedrooms, who build memories in kitchens.
We are humans trying to come home.
And we're taking that right back.
— The Clearance Movement
For housing. For healing. For human dignity.
For the radical idea that people matter more than profit.
Join us. Because everyone deserves to come home.
