Pictured from Left: Anh Doan, Sukhraj Singh, Sidney Beaty, Dhruv Bisht, Anudeep Bonagiri
For nearly 40 years, Texas Housers has valued the contributions of students who bring new perspectives, skills, and energy to the housing justice movement. Through our internship program, students have the opportunity to apply their academic interests to real world challenges while learning how research, advocacy, and community partnerships work together to create change.
This summer, Texas Housers partnered with students from the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) to explore how computer science and technology can support housing justice. The students worked with our research team to automate the update process for the Bexar County Eviction Mapping Tool, creating a workflow that streamlines data cleaning, geocoding, demographic analysis, and preparation for mapping.
Their work will save significant staff time and strengthen Texas Housers’ ability to analyze eviction trends, inform policy discussions, and advocate for renters. Below, our UTSA student interns – Dhruv Bisht, Sukhraj Singh, Anh Doan, and Anudeep Bonagiri – reflect on their experience building technology in service of housing justice.
Housing justice and computer science are fields that people do not often associate with one another. After spending this summer building an automation tool for Texas Housers, what connections do you now see between these two fields?
“Developing a tool to help automate the work of Texas Housers underscores the ways that computer science is an amplifier in the realm of housing justice, as it turns disparate, hard-to-access data into something useful and meaningful for advocacy efforts. Housing justice is dependent upon identifying disparities, such as the mistreatment of renters or discriminatory patterns of eviction, which in turn involves working with large amounts of data such as property databases and code violation data.” – Dhruv Bisht
What role do you think computer scientists and other technical professionals can play in addressing complex community challenges, like housing insecurity?
“I think computer scientists and technical professionals can play an important role in addressing community challenges like housing insecurity by transforming large amounts of data into meaningful information. During this project, I saw how software and GIS tools can organize, analyze and visualize eviction data to identify patterns that would be difficult to see otherwise. These insights can help nonprofits, researchers and policymakers make more informed decisions about where resources and support are needed most. While technology alone cannot solve housing insecurity, it provides reliable data and tools that enable organizations to better understand the problem and develop more effective solutions.” – Sukhraj Singh
This project required more than just technical skills – it required understanding that every data point represents a person, family, or community impacted by housing challenges. How did learning about eviction, housing policy, and Texas Housers’ work influence the way you approached this project and how you think about your work as a computer scientist going forward?
“My interpretation of data completely changed when I got the chance to learn and work with Texas Housers. It’s not just data anymore, it represents a story, something that impacts a community. Working with Texas Housers required me to put myself in the shoes of both the landlords and the evicted families to help tell that story. Instead of simply looking for trends, I started asking why certain neighborhoods had higher eviction rates, how factors like income, rent burden, and access to resources might be connected, and how policy could influence those outcomes. I realized that data alone doesn’t tell the full story, it needs context to be meaningful and used responsibly, and it needs to be told in a way that’s transparent enough to advocate for better housing policy and get support resources to the people who need them.
After this internship, I’ve become much more aware of my community and how data, when it tells a story, can actually help create change. Going forward, I want to go beyond just building models or finding patterns, I want to keep asking who’s behind the data and how my work will actually affect them.” – Anh Doan
Nonprofit organizations often have limited resources while working to solve complex problems. Your team built a tool that will save Texas Housers significant time and strengthen our research and advocacy efforts. What does it mean to you to create technology that builds the capacity of an organization doing this work?
“Before working with Texas Housers, I usually thought about software in terms of what it could create. During this internship, I began thinking just as much about what it could remove.
As I built an automation pipeline for the eviction data workflow, I saw how much time was consumed by repetitive and tedious tasks like cleaning datasets and geocoding thousands of addresses. Those tasks are necessary, but they don’t hold the real value of Texas Housers’ work. The real value comes from asking better questions, uncovering patterns in the data, and translating those insights into research that informs policy and strengthens advocacy. Knowing that the software I built will continue creating that space for the team long after my internship is what makes this work meaningful to me.” – Anudeep Bonagiri
We’re grateful to Sukhraj, Anudeep, Anh, and Dhruv for the time, thoughtfulness, and technical expertise they brought to this project. Their work will continue to support Texas Housers’ research long after their internship, and we’re excited to see where they take their skills next. We’re proud to have had them as part of the Housers team!
