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RateMyPlace
Renters make one of the highest-stakes decisions of their lives with almost no reliable information. Landlords have data on tenants. Tenants have word of mouth. RateMyPlace is my attempt to even that out.
What it is
RateMyPlace is a tenant review platform I designed and built from scratch, live in New Haven and Boston. You search an address and see what people who actually lived there reported about conditions, management, and the problems research shows affect your health. Then you leave your own review for the next tenant.
The scoring isn't vibes
I built a 27-item housing assessment out of three validated public health instruments, the OHQS, the PHQS, and the WHO LARES, and weighted each item by its documented health impact. Every reviewed building gets traced back through public records to the owner actually accountable for its conditions, so the score points at a person, not just a place.
How I built it
I built the whole thing solo and full-stack: Astro, TypeScript, React, running on Cloudflare.
I designed it privacy-first. Reviewers stay anonymous, move-out dates show as seasons instead of exact dates, and no IP addresses or personal identifiers are stored. The point is that a tenant can tell the truth about a place without fear of retaliation.
Where it's going
I pitched RateMyPlace at the 2026 Yale Innovation Summit, where it picked up local news coverage. It's growing by word of mouth, one honest review at a time, which is exactly how a public record of housing should grow.