Join nonprofits JustFix and University Neighborhood Housing Program (UNHP) for a virtual presentation on how they used open data and open-source community tools to build a dashboard that supports tenant organizing in buildings impacted by the collapse of Signature Bank.
Signature Bank financed some of the city’s worst slumlords for years, underwriting their unscrupulous business practices premised on neglect, displacement, and deregulation of rent-stabilized apartments. The bank collapsed in 2023 and the FDIC took over the mortgages for 2,000+ buildings with over 30,000 units of rent-stabilized housing. This changed the incentives to make it possible to hold landlords accountable and allow tenants to use their power in new ways to get meaningful repairs made and even take control of their buildings through collective ownership models.
Ana Peña (Community Research & Data Analyst at UNHP) and Maxwell Austensen (Software Engineer at JustFix) will share the background on Signature Bank and opportunities presented in the wake of its collapse, how they worked with various stakeholders to guide the project, how they used open data and open-source tools to create the data dashboard, and how tenants, organizers, and other groups are utilizing the dashboard to build power and improve housing conditions.
This presentation is open to all, requires no specialized knowledge or skills, and might be most relevant to:
– NYC tenants interested in the situation with Signature Bank and how data can support organizing
– Government agency workers interested in seeing how their open data can be used for good.
– Civic tech enthusiasts interested in ways to access and utilize open data in new ways.
Click "Going" to register for this event. If you are signing up for a virtual event, you will receive a Zoom link in an email confirmation.
