In civilized societies, the right to shelter is part of the social contract.[1] The Unites States does not provide this, so people are at the whims of private enterprises for their survival.

What the "woke police" are saying is that letting this kind of infrastructure spread is setting the stage for more inequality. A private, unregulated Big Brother ruling real estate for a few wealthy owners is the definition of oppression. Anger against aristocracy and feudalism is one of the reasons we fought for independence.[2]

Let's take your situation as an example. Unless you are fabulously wealthy, you are only one market crash and/or critical illness away from bankruptcy. Larger competitors will gobble up your assets for pennies on the dollar, and then everyone will refuse to rent to you because of your financial history.

Right now the system is working in your favor. What happens when it isn't?

[1] https://www.newstatesman.com/spotlight/housing/2019/09/housi...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/does-in...

I don't think the tech listed in this article are at odds with wanting government to provide more housing options. The number one thing to improve most situations is to just build more housing and stop inflating asset prices as a handout to the middle and (increasingly just) upper class.

It's possible this tech gives power to landlords over tenants. It's also possible that its a net benefit to society, even if landlord power is a big problem on its own.

So because there might be a market crash in the future and the system might no longer be "working for me", I'm not supposed to be able to use tools and data to screen tenants and verify their ability to pay rent?

I'm willing to take that chance.

Civilised societies are democratic ones, does the populace, in general, agree with your concept of the social contract?

If you are going to talk about risk, why not attack a few probabilities on those scenarios, then we can talk about insurance.

I mean "attach", not attack.

The housing advocacy I've seen suffers from a motte and bailey dynamic: a certain kind of activist seems to really want to abolish prices and markets as tools for dealing with scarcity while insisting that they're merely trying to enact common sense tenant protections or maintain people's right to housing or something. The NIMBY opposition to new housing makes sense in this context: it shouldn't be developers (i.e., the market) that decides when to expand the housing inventory, but instead some committee.

I just wish these people be up front about their opposition to prices so we could have a clear discussion of who decides who gets to live where.