caa’s Abby Lindenberg Leads PropTech Miami Affordability Panel

Key points:

• • caa Founder and CEO Abby Lindenberg moderated one of Future PropTech Miami 2026’s most consequential panels, speaking with five industry leaders on the intersection of technology, affordability, and equity in urban housing.
• • The session challenged panelists to define success beyond NOI — examining how AI, automation, and smart home technology can serve lower-income residents rather than widen the gap between luxury and affordable multifamily.
• • Lindenberg’s role at the conference reflects caa’s commitment to being present where critical decisions about cities, capital, and communities are actively being shaped.

May 2026 – On May 12, caa Founder and CEO Abby Lindenberg took the stage at Future PropTech Miami 2026 to moderate one of the conference’s most substantive sessions — a panel that forced real estate developers, investors, and policymakers in attendance to confront an uncomfortable question: is PropTech closing the affordability gap, or making it worse?

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Human-centered multifamily

The session — “Human-Centered Multifamily: Building Affordable Urban Communities for Future” — ran on May 12, the conference’s opening day. Lindenberg was joined by five panelists representing the full breadth of the multifamily ecosystem: Charles Foschini of Berkadia, Lissette Calderon of Neology Group, Alessandro Marchesini of Planet Smart City, Bharath Mundlapudi, CEO and Founder of Enterprise Minds In, and Larry Singh of the Miami Association of Realtors.

Lindenberg opened the session noting how PropTech is delivering real advantages — accelerating construction timelines, streamlining property management, and enabling smarter buildings — but those innovations risk serving the top of the market while leaving the populations who most need stable housing further behind. Her opening provocation set the tone for everything that followed: if 80% of property management tasks were fully automated, which single human interaction should never be handed to an algorithm?

Three phases of inquiry

Lindenberg structured the conversation in three deliberate phases, starting with the fundamentals. Foschini was challenged to move beyond net operating income and define what genuine success looks like for a human-centered multifamily project — which metrics, from resident health to social mobility, the industry is actually tracking in 2026. Singh discussed the Live Local Act and its 2025 amendments, pressing on what friction points still stand between legislative momentum and livable, tech-enabled communities. She then asked Calderon to reframe smart home technology — AI-powered security, energy monitoring, and similar tools — not as luxury amenities but as baseline infrastructure for low-income and workforce housing residents.

The second phase moved into current trends, and the questions got sharper. Foschini was asked where disciplined AI deployment is genuinely lowering the cost of living for residents — not just cutting administrative overhead for managers. Calderon then focused on an important data point: with 65% of residents now preferring digital leasing, how do developers ensure that human-centered platforms do not create new barriers for the very populations affordable housing exists to serve? Singh named specific PropTech integrations that have measurably reduced utility burdens for lower-income tenants, and Marchesini discussed the growing tension between AI-powered access control and residents’ rights to privacy and data protection in affordable communities.

Mundlapudi shed light on the operational question at the heart of the affordable multifamily segment: how enterprise automation — the kind typically deployed in luxury concierge-style developments — can be restructured to lower the cost structures that keep many developers out of affordable housing entirely. Mundlapudi also discussed using that same technology to make the application and income-verification process faster and more dignified for prospective residents.

The final phase pushed the panelists into forward-thinking mode. Singh was asked what single obstacle is preventing hard-tech solutions like 3D printing and modular construction from becoming standard in high-cost urban markets. Marchesini talked about making the investment case for human-centered affordable communities directly to institutional capital. Foschini was then hit with the session’s broadest question: as AI moves toward a fully autonomous digital workforce, does that trajectory produce a more equitable standard of living across urban communities — or does it deepen the divide? Mundlapudi had the final word, describing how enterprise automation can be designed, five to 10 years out, to give residents in affordable communities genuine agency over the technology built around their lives.

Why it matters

The panel sat at the intersection of technology, equity, policy, and urban planning — an all-encompassing theme that stands to impact the future of real estate in a meaningful way. As real estate undergoes rapid technological transformation, PropTech startups making their case to investors, developers navigating public scrutiny of major urban projects, and policy leaders building consensus around the cities of the future all face the same underlying challenge: communicating complex change to audiences who demand accountability.

Lindenberg’s role at Future PropTech Miami 2026 was a demonstration of what caa brings to environments where important decisions are being shaped — the capacity to ask the questions that move conversations forward, and to bring strategic communication to bear on the challenges that matter most.

Want more? Read the Invest: Miami report.