Siri, Apple's voice-activated digital assistant, tells iPhone user, "Go ahead, I'm listening," which also displays as text on the screen.

On Siri and Recognitive Violence

By Joshua A. Halstead

As a disabled person who relies on speech recognition software to complete a range of daily writing tasks (from emails to book chapters), I am no stranger to the universe of voice assistants, having cut my teeth on Dragon Dictate in the ’90s.

Though I’m used to the software knowing my voice, that it now knows my location is uncanny. This discovery occurred on a morning stroll when Siri spelled “Urth Caffé” correctly, rather than, as was expected, scribing “earth café.” This is when I realized that my assistant had turned into a stalker.

In this short article, I argue that Apple’s decision to integrate user location data into Siri’s speech recognition system created a product that contributes to gentrification and could further marginalize disabled people.

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redlined map of Los Angeles.

A Critical Race Perspective on Housing and Health

Image from “Mapping Inequality,” American Panorama, ed. Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers.

By Courtney Anderson

Only 10-20% of health outcomes are attributed to health care. Social, economic, and environmental factors thus account for the vast majority of population and individual health outcomes. And housing encompasses many of these factors, as it largely determines the built environment and exposure to stressors.

Section 801 of the Fair Housing Act declares, “It is the policy of the United States to provide, within constitutional limitations, for fair housing throughout the United States.” This Act was the culmination of racial justice protests, resistance to discrimination and violence, and other aspects of the civil rights movement. Despite the stated intention of this Act, housing remains unequal across the nation.

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Housing Equity Week in Review

An update from the world of housing law and equity, for the week of October 30-November 3, 2017

  • New viewpoint article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, from Megan Sandel, MD, MPH and Matthew Desmond, PhD, says investing in housing for health improves mission and margin.
  • An analysis from the Seattle Times asks, “Will allowing more housing types in some single-family zones make Seattle’s whitest neighborhoods more racially diverse?”
  • As sea levels rise, wealthy people can more easily afford to move to high ground, making gentrification worse, via Yale Climate Connections.
  • A new study finds a correlation between the number of patents a city produces and economic segregation within its limits, via the Atlantic.
  • Benjamin Somogyi argues in the Regulatory Review, to solve the next foreclosure crisis, look to Sacramento
  • New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., have approved funding to provide legal defense to low-income tenants at risk of eviction. A look at how free legal help could prevent evictions, via Huffington Post.

Housing Equity Week in Review

The week of Sept. 4-11, 2017 brought more housing-related news from the southeast in the wake of Harvey and Irma, and a few new resources. The latest in housing equity and the law, below:

  • Matthew Desmond writes a Housing State of the Union for the Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty’s Pathways Magazine State of the Union issue. The report emphasizes the home-ownership racial gap, the relationship with the affordability crisis, and the reform that is needed for the mortgage interest tax deduction.
  • A report by the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank on gentrification sheds light on the fact that gentrification is not a new phenomenon
  • The New York Times ran an op-ed on the impact of land use regulation on economic growth.
  • Paul Krugman of the New York Times writes about the need to find equilibrium between negative sprawl (such as in Houston) and NIMBYism (as experienced in San Francisco). He asks, “Why can’t we get cities right?”
  • Community Land Trust has a tool for community focused development.