Research in practice · 2026
When housing records meet lived experience.
My fight to keep my Southern California home has become a practical test of a broader question: can people understand and challenge the systems that govern their lives?
Questions from the ground
Who knows the rules?
Residents need rules they can find and understand, and a meaningful way to ask how a decision was made.
- How can residents be held accountable for rules that are unwritten, unclear, or hard to find?
- If residents experience different enforcement, what records would let them tell whether decisions are consistent and fair across the property?
What counts as a remedy?
A response, a closed record, and a corrected condition are different things. How can the people affected verify which one occurred?
Technology is part of the housing question
Pricing tools, resident portals, screening systems, and security data can shape daily life in housing. I ask who chooses these systems, what they record, who benefits, and how a resident can challenge an error.
What cameras are in use, are they all disclosed to residents, and do any systems use facial recognition or other AI-assisted monitoring? At what point does ordinary residential life become surveillance, and who controls what is recorded, kept, shared, or challenged?
How I approach the work
I separate what I observed, what a document records, what an institution says, what I infer, and what remains unanswered. I do not treat a reported concern as a proven violation or a closed file as proof that a condition was fixed. Neighbors' experiences belong to them; sharing them requires care and consent.
This is an introduction to an ongoing inquiry, not a comprehensive case file. Its purpose is to connect the questions in my research to a place where they have immediate consequences.
My published essays follow management and city and county responses, including questions the records have yet to answer.