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A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

nytimes.com

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Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#161

Post by em500 »

jonathankoren wrote: post #44

Unsurprisingly, this technology, and presumably utilizing the surveillance to find any reason for eviction, is being applied to poor people. You rarely find this being rolled out in luxury apartments. Let's be honest here, poor people are stereotyped as being lazy, sneaky, untrustworthy, and stupid, so they have to be subjective to a more paternalism.

I thought it's not uncommon for luxury NYC apartment buildings to have a 24hr concierge / lobby attendant who's main task is to keep strangers out. (In Hong Kong this is pretty much the norm in all residential buildings, upscale or cheap government subsidized ones alike.)

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#162

Post by rdsubhas »

closeparen wrote: post #46
alister wrote: post #10

One result of doors being controlled by facial recognition -- or any other kind of biometric system -- is that you have to get permission from someone whenever you have a regular visitor. You can no longer give your girlfriend, boyfriend, dog sitter, relatives, or whoever you wish a key or access card to your home. You have to enroll that person in the facial database. And whoever is doing the enrolling can ask for l…

This is already accomplished by having difficult-to-duplicate keys or fobs for the building entrance, which is a pretty standard feature of apartment living. And yes, some management companies are very stingy with extra fobs, as a control against having extra people in the unit who are not on the lease, or Airbnb, or whatever. You can tell you are in a building with a lot of illegal extra tenants when the keyfob-cont…

Face recognition will not allow anyone other than the tenant EVEN if they carry the very original key. Forget about duplicate keys, which may be it's own problem, but nothing compared to this.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#163

Post by everyone »

antisthenes wrote: post #118
burtonator wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's ignore whether this is dystopian or evil for a minute. Assume that the land lord is right and that this will lower his expenses. I assume he's going to pass that savings to his tenants or just use it to buy more properties?

If this is NY, and the buildings are rent-stabilized, he could already be losing money on some apartments by charging below market if the mandated maximum rent increases did not keep up with the rents increases elsewhere in the city. So to answer your question - maybe? But most likely not. And it's not necessarily evil.

The landlord is not "losing money" in that case.. merely just not profiting as much as otherwise.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#164

Post by chrisco255 »

alister wrote: post #10

One result of doors being controlled by facial recognition -- or any other kind of biometric system -- is that you have to get permission from someone whenever you have a regular visitor. You can no longer give your girlfriend, boyfriend, dog sitter, relatives, or whoever you wish a key or access card to your home. You have to enroll that person in the facial database. And whoever is doing the enrolling can ask for l…

This would seem to violate a tenant's rights to Quiet Use and Enjoyment, as is recognized by real estate law:

https://www.landlordology.com/implied-covenant-quiet-enjoyme...

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#165

Post by pixl97 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #104
fwip wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It may be better to legislate for all this data to be open to all rather than trying to legislate it out of existence. I can't imagine that it would be better for every person on the planet to have access to my face scans at my apartment than just my landlord.

Surveillance will always be subject to authority-flavored selective availability and interpretation unless the collected information is freely available to all legitimately interested parties. This has only ever directly affected me once, in a stupid argument with my apartment administration over a $250 fire exit sign, but it was enough to make me aware of how much power the person holding the footage has. Extrapolat…

> unless the collected information is freely available to all legitimately interested parties.

Unfortunately abusive parties will be the ones most interested in collecting your data in the first place.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#166

Post by mbrumlow »

chrisco255 wrote: post #164
alister wrote: post #10

One result of doors being controlled by facial recognition -- or any other kind of biometric system -- is that you have to get permission from someone whenever you have a regular visitor. You can no longer give your girlfriend, boyfriend, dog sitter, relatives, or whoever you wish a key or access card to your home. You have to enroll that person in the facial database. And whoever is doing the enrolling can ask for l…

This would seem to violate a tenant's rights to Quiet Use and Enjoyment, as is recognized by real estate law: https://www.landlordology.com/implied-covenant-quiet-enjoyme...

How so? I read your link and can't help to see it is about tenants rights, not visitors of tenants.

It seems this would only stop non-tenets from having access to the facilities. At least without being accompanied by actual tenants.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#167

Post by pixl97 »

geodel wrote: post #156
cowpig wrote: post #141

My sister works as a lawyer in NYC on these kinds of cases. I can tell you that when landlords have a financial incentive to get rid of a tenant (as is very often the case in rent-stabilized housing), they can and will do anything in their power to do so, including every possible form of harassment. A system that allows landlords to track their tenants' activities with a computer, lock out whoever they want individua…

If balance of power is in landlorsd's favor, wouldn't they simply ask tenant to vacate instead of going in roundabout manner.

The balance of power doesn't necessarily mean all the power. There are many times a landlord wants to get rid of a person that pays their bill monthly and is still under contract. The landlord can tell them to leave, but they don't have to. So at that point the landlord can go in to asshole mode with little legal recourse unless you are very very good at documenting their behavior.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#168

Post by mbrumlow »

pwg wrote: post #19

The privacy concerns here are huge, but the much more direct issue is from this quote from the article: > the same programs failed to identify darker-skinned women up to one-third of the time. A one-third failure rate means that on average, for every three times you try to return home, you are likely to have the system fail to identify you at least once. Being locked out, as a resident, one-third of the number of tim…

Simple problem! Use a rfid chip embedded din their hand!

I wish I had this for my house.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#169

Post by chrisco255 »

mbrumlow wrote: post #166
chrisco255 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would seem to violate a tenant's rights to Quiet Use and Enjoyment, as is recognized by real estate law: https://www.landlordology.com/implied-covenant-quiet-enjoyme...

How so? I read your link and can't help to see it is about tenants rights, not visitors of tenants. It seems this would only stop non-tenets from having access to the facilities. At least without being accompanied by actual tenants.

Did you read the part about Privacy and Right of Use?

Facial recognition would violate that.

Re: A Landlord Wants Facial Recognition in Its Rent-Stabilized Buildings

#170

Post by scarface74 »

pseudalopex wrote: post #153
scarface74 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re subletting the apartment under the table, it is a lot easier to kick them out if they don’t pay the rent. It’s not like they can go to court for an unlawful eviction. Even in my relatively landlord friendly state, it can take two or three months to get rid of a tenant.

In New York, a subtenant in a rent-stabilized apartment can sue the prime tenant to recover overcharged rent. They can also report the prime tenant to the landlord, who will probably evict them. The subtenant can even take over the lease in some cases.

Take from someone whose been on the landlord side. It’s not worth the trouble of going through a lawsuit and trying to collect damages. The lawsuit is the easy part. Collecting is the hard part.
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