Search

Understanding residential mobility, housing affordability, and the geography of neighborhood advantage and disadvantage relies on robust information about housing search processes and housing markets. Existing data about housing markets, especially rental markets, suffer from accuracy issues and a lack of temporal and geographic flexibility. Data collected from online rental platforms that are commonly used can help address these issues and hold considerable promise for better understanding the full distribution of available rental homes. However, realizing this promise requires a careful assessment of potential sources of bias as online rental listing platforms may perpetuate inequalities similar to those found in physical spaces. This paper approaches the production of rental advertisements as a social process driven by both contextual and property level factors. We compare data from two online platforms for the 100 most populated metropolitan areas in the United States to explore inequality in digital rental listing spaces and understand what characteristics are associated with over and underrepresentation of advertisements in certain areas. We find similar associations for socioeconomic measures between platforms and across urban and suburban parts of these metropolitan areas. In contrast, the importance of racial and ethnic composition, as well as broader patterns of segregation, for online representation differs substantially across space and platform. This analysis informs our understanding of how online platforms affect housing search dynamics through their biases and segmentation, and highlights the potential and limits in using the data available on these platforms to produce small area rental estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On December 25, 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate an explosive device on a plane landing in Detroit. The attack was unsuccessful, but it spurred an important domestic debate regarding U.S. anti-terrorist programs and policies. In particular, the event fueled an argument over the proper forum for the interrogation and prosecution of terrorist suspects captured in the United States. Focusing on national security issues, some contended that treating Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant in an Article Ill court, rather than subjecting him to a military commission, was imprudent and dangerous, while others insisted that it was entirely appropriate and responsible. This Note will probe this debate by comparing the two tribunals as each relates to the legal protections for suspects during interrogation. The Note argues that although some differences do exist, it is quite plausible that treating Abdulmutallab and other captured terrorist suspects as criminal defendants in Article III courts does not adversely impact intelligence gathering and national security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]