Is your landlord a robot?

June 23, 2026

Plus: heroes of a post-Roe world ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

June 23, 2026

Salutations, Meteor readers,

Mmmyyyyy president is a Love Island: USA fan. I don’t know about y’all’s president.

In today’s newsletter, we’ve got your first look at a new study about race, wealth, and AI. Plus, it’s been four years since the Dobbs decision, and we’re writing a love letter to the people who deserve it (not Samuel Alito).

P.S. New York readers! You still have time to get to the polls and do your thing.

From the villa,

Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

Is your landlord a robot: In the short time that generative AI has been the center of national conversation, it’s been cast as one of two things: the harbinger of the end of the human race, or the greatest thing to happen to us since the Industrial Revolution. However, there is a third, less dramatic path that AI has been quietly taking: maintaining the status quo.

Today, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights released a new qualitative report revealing that the use of generative AI, specifically in housing and employment, has been compounding existing biases against people of color. If left unchecked, the researchers posit, the use of AI will widen the existing racial wealth gap in the United States. (The report focuses primarily on the gap between white and Black Americans because it is “the most measurable and well-documented.”)

The most concerning findings address the increasing use of AI in the housing market—aka “proptech,” short for property technology—to do everything from screen tenant applications to determine mortgage access. These tools “systemically reproduce racial disparities” because the algorithms are relying on existing biased data (like redlining and other kinds of de jure segregation), the report explains. The algorithms also lack an understanding of nuance: “Screening tools fail to consider mitigating factors such as job loss, medical hardship, domestic violence, or the actual outcomes of prior eviction cases.” And the group bearing the brunt of proptech’s algorithmic discrimination is Black women, who were already overrepresented in the growing eviction crisis; AI bias, the research shows, will only worsen the problem.

“It’s not because Black women aren’t paying rent,” explains Yvette N. A. Pappoe, a litigator and equity scholar who is one of the authors of the report. “Evictions happen for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with paying rent. But that doesn’t matter to the algorithm.” Pappoe explains that unlike a human reviewing an application, AI is not “checking to see if an eviction was dismissed. It’s not checking to see if paperwork was misfiled.” It’s simply pulling an eviction record and disqualifying candidates based on a singular negative metric.

The report points to the example of a woman named Mary Louis, who was denied an apartment after a program called SafeRent rated her poorly due to bad credit. The program did not take into account other mitigating factors such as Louis’ housing voucher, a high-credit co-signer, and a letter of recommendation from her previous landlord. Louis and 400 other Black and Latino applicants filed a lawsuit against SafeRent last year.

“People have talked about AI as this equalizing force…that can be used to help democratize access,” Alejandra Montoya-Boyer, senior director of the Center for Civil Rights and Technology, tells The Meteor. And some of that is true: “It’s increasing information. It’s making our lives easier in all of these ways.” But these good things will only happen, Montoya-Boyer says, “if we have the guardrails in place to…make sure that this technology is developed [in a way that recognizes] the vast history of racism and sexism, and discrimination that is built into our society. Without guardrails, AI is just going to replicate all of that.”

“One of the key guardrails we suggest is a requirement on having a human in the loop,” says Montoya-Boyer. “Companies absolutely should not be using AI tools for consequential decision-making without human oversight.”

While much of the study highlights the failings of AI in housing and employment, it’s not anti-AI, per se–especially for women or people of color. From an AI literacy standpoint, it “makes sense for us as people from marginalized communities…to be engaging” with these tools, Montoya-Boyer says. “But the onus of responsibility should not be [solely on consumers].”

Overall, the researchers are operating with a sensibility that almost resembles optimism. “One thing the report tries to do is point to a world where we flip what’s happening…where AI is incorporated in such a way that it helps to shrink the wealth gap,” Pappoe explains. In that world, AI could help expand access to wealth accumulation and affordable housing, as well as democratize banking and credit for historically excluded communities.

As Pappoe puts it: “We’re not totally doomed.”

AND:

For days, thousands of Puerto Ricans have gone without water in their homes while hotels and tourist hotspots have had water trucked in to keep businesses going. Is there a drought on the island? No. Rather, breakdowns in the aqueduct system and water treatment plants have made it impossible to get potable water to residents.
The wonderful folks at Uncloseted Media sat down with Shy Sotomayor, the dominatrix who had a nine-year professional relationship with Bryon Noem, husband of former Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem. In the interview, Sotomayor notes that Bryon may have been inspired by his wife’s own “Mar-a-Lago transformation.” Noem’s makeover, in Sotomayor’s opinion, “really pushed him to become obsessive over pretty girls and maybe even fantasizing about being a pretty girl.”
Hockey player Lily Shannon made history this weekend at the PWHL draft. Shannon, who was drafted as part of San Jose’s inaugural team, is the first player in league history to use hearing aids. She hopes to inspire other athletes with hearing loss.

LILY SHANNON (L) CELEBRATES WITH LILY YOVETICH (R) AFTER THEIR NORTHERN HUSKIES CAME OUT ON TOP AT THE 2025 WOMEN’S BEANPOT TOURNAMENT CHAMPIONSHIP IN BOSTON. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Rich people are so weird about their pools. Just throw a tarp on it or something.
I love this, I really do. But they have not yet developed a vaccine strong enough to save people from having that much bum-to-skin contact with an NYC subway floor.

ONE MORE THING

Tomorrow, it will have been exactly four years since the Supreme Court ruled that American women had no constitutional right to abortion. That decision ushered in a bloody era of violence, of women dying in bed, in the ER, while their mothers screamed, while their children screamed. It has been an era of mounting shamelessness on the part of extremist lawmakers who have stopped even feigning concern and instead hired bounty hunters, gone after doctors, spread outlandish lies, and suggested executing abortion patients. It has been as bad as abortion-rights advocates said it would be, and they said it would be very, very bad.

So it would be easy to end this newsletter thinking about all the outrages, about all the self-important men (most of them white) making decisions about the lives and deaths of women (many of them Black). But we’ve been doing that, and you’ve been doing that, for years now.

This, instead, is a love letter. To the volunteers who have spent the last four years doing midnight shifts at abortion funds, answering terrified calls from Florida or Texas. To the medical personnel who ship abortion pills to people in ban states; who are nimble with their regimens as mifepristone is under threat; who refer their clients to out-of-state providers in hushed tones; who protect their patients from ceaseless harassment; who train students and open clinics on the borders of abortion-hostile states. To the advocates who make it easier to get abortion pills. To the lawyers who file suit after suit. To the organizers who knock on thousands of doors to get abortion referendums on the ballot, where they matter. To the journalists who tell the truth even when state officials won’t. To the pilots, to the drivers, to the parents. And to the women who have told their stories, over and over and over and over.

The news cycle has somewhat moved on from abortion bans. These people never did. They have taken care of you, and of each other, and they’re only getting stronger. Tomorrow isn’t about the assholes. It’s about them, and us.

Tomorrow is also a great day to give to an abortion fund. Find one near you here.

– Cindi Leive