We're an all-women tech collective that is building free, digital tools for a fair housing search.

Today, rampant discrimination in the rental market prevents thousands of New Yorkers from finding a home.

You may know it's illegal for landlords to discriminate based on things like your race or religion – but the law also protects the many New Yorkers who use government assistance to pay for rent in this increasingly unaffordable city.

Often hiding in plain sight, discrimination happens in a split second over the phone, and can be tough to recognize, let alone document. As a result, countless New Yorkers remain homeless or in unsafe housing situations for months, if not years, and those who discriminate routinely get away with breaking the law.

We build free, mobile tools to record and report discrimination.

At Unlock NYC, we work with New Yorkers impacted by housing discrimination to build technology that makes it easy to identify, record, and report unfair treatment.

Our users can choose to send their report to a fair housing agency that can take action on their behalf, or to add their story to our growing body of data on housing discrimination in New York City.

Support the next step in our journey!

We've reached a critical juncture in our journey. On December 31, 2020, we launched our reporting chatbot after 18 months of research, co-designing, testing and refining the tool. Now we need your help to get it into the hands of thousands of New Yorkers! Our goals for 2021 are to:

File 1,000 reports by the end of this year to expose the scale of discrimination in NYC and get justice for our users!
Release an easy call recording tool to help our users collect real-time evidence of discrimination
Cultivate a community of funders and donors to sustain our work and support the movement to end housing discrimination

What will you use the funds for?

A lot of this work up until now has been done through love, commitment, and collective labor, at times compensated and at times fully volunteer-based.

If we raise $2,500, we can cover the tech platforms that power our tools and keep them free for our users and partners.

If we raise $10,000, we'll also be able to pay stipends for our Leadership Collective and members of our community who share expertise via our research/feedback sessions.

Anything we raise beyond $10,000 will go towards offering stipends to team members. We'll prioritize team stipend allocation based on financial need and lived experience of housing injustice.

Our Team

Collectively, our core team and our Leadership Collective hold experiences in participatory design, software engineering, political and tenant organizing, and direct experiences of housing discrimination and navigating the housing voucher system. We are brought together by a deep belief in housing as a human right. You can learn more about us on our website.

Read more about our work in the press:

Fast Company, "This chatbot helps New Yorkers report housing discrimination"

BKLYNER, "Unlocking NYC housing opportunities for residents on rental assistance"

The Indypendent, "All-women tech group launches new tool to end rental voucher discrimination"

WBAI, The Indypendent Radio Hour, Interview with Unlock NYC Team Member