Cloé ST-HILAIRE, University of Waterloo, Canada
In an era where everything can be managed from a smartphone, housing is certainly no exception. From short-term rental platforms to property technology, digital technologies play a shaping role in contemporary housing markets. The extent to which digitization becomes a contributing factor to the proliferation of financialized actors in rental housing, however, remains understudied (Fields 2019). On the one hand, data produced by digitization creates a new avenue for capital accumulation (Sadowski 2019). On the other hand, global shifts occurring in the past four decades (Sassen 2012) have paved the road for housing to become a site of investment by financial firms. Financialized landlords have been associated to poorer health outcomes in senior rental housing (August 2021), displacements (Walks & Soederberg 2021), overleveraged buildings (Fields 2017), intimidation tactics (Crosby 2020) and higher rents (Garcia-Lamarca 2020).
This research builds on Marxist literature (Sadowski 2020; Harvey 2019, 2018; Marx 2014) to show that digitization became an enabling factor for financialized actors to operate. I draw on Marx’s concepts of capital accumulation, organizational structures, and technological change to theorize the evolution of digital technologies in housing. To do so, I focus on Canada as a site of financialized/digitized geography. I use a qualitative document analysis of media sources to trace the evolution of digital tech in Canadian housing and its relation to financialized practices. From this I present an evolutionary framework of digital expansion in housing from 1990 to today. I argue that the increasing technology in housing has been a necessary condition for contemporary capital accumulation by financialized landlords in the country. I conclude by relating it back to the ambiguities it leaves tenants in, namely in relation to power structures, organizing capacities and ownership obscurantism.
Mots clés : Financialization|Rental Housing|Canada|Digitization|Social implications of technology
A104578CS