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A new start-up based in Silicon Valley allows its users to stream live video of the eviction of tenants from San Francisco apartment complexes.
Displacr bills itself as a “mobile-first front seat” to the city’s rapidly changing demographics, allowing users to watch as poorer residents are evicted from their homes in San Francisco’s Mission and Outer Richmond neighborhoods.
“We got the idea our sophomore year at Stanford,” said Displacr co-founder Thad Simonsen. “We thought it was a big bummer that only upper-middle class tech workers living in San Francisco could follow evictions as they happened. We wanted to open that option up to upper-middle class tech workers all over the world.”
Upon opening the app, users are presented with a map of the San Francisco Bay Area covered with dots representing tenant evictions happening live. One tap brings up more information about the eviction, including the evicted renter’s salary and the name of the software company where the incoming tenant is currently employed. A second tap loads live streaming video of the eviction as it occurs, with the option to blur anti-gentrification protests as they appear on screen.
“I’m blown away by how successful the app has been in its first two months among a really diverse community,” Simonsen said. “We’ve gotten hundreds of positive Twitter and Facebook messages from all over the Ivy League and Carnegie Mellon and MIT.”
According to sources in the venture capital world, Displacr is also currently in talks to partner with Amazon and Microsoft to bring the app to the growing tech-eviction market in Seattle.
