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Privacy United States Technology

Meet the Spy Tech Companies Helping Landlords Evict People (vice.com) 263

schwit1 shares an excerpt from a Motherboard article: Some renters may savor the convenience of "smart home" technologies like keyless entry and internet-connected doorbell cameras. But tech companies are increasingly selling these solutions to landlords for a more nefarious purpose: spying on tenants in order to evict them or raise their rent. "You CAN raise rents in NYC!" reads the headline of one promotional email sent to landlords. It was a sales pitch from Teman, a tech company that makes surveillance systems for apartment buildings. Teman's sales pitch proposes a solution to a frustration for many New York City landlords, who have tenants living in older apartments that are protected by a myriad of rent control and stabilization laws. The company's email suggests a workaround: "3 Simple Steps to Re-Regulate a Unit." First, use one of Teman's automated products to catch a tenant breaking a law or violating their lease, such as by having unapproved subletters or loud parties. Then, "vacate" them and merge their former apartment with one next door or above or below, creating a "new" unit that's not eligible for rent protections. "Combine a $950/mo studio and $1400/mo one-bedroom into a $4200/mo DEREGULATED two-bedroom," the email enticed. Teman's surveillance systems can even "help you identify which units are most-likely open to moving out (or being evicted!)." [...]

Erin McElroy, a professor of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin who tracks eviction trends, also says that digital surveillance of residential buildings is increasing, particularly in New York City, which she calls the "landlord tech epicenter." Any camera system can document possibly eviction-worthy behavior, but McElroy identified two companies, Teman and Reliant Safety, that use the biometrics of tenants with the explicit goal of facilitating evictions. These companies are part of an expanding industry known as "proptech," encompassing all the technology used for acquiring and managing real estate. A report by Future Market Insights predicts that proptech will quadruple its current value, becoming a $86.5 billion industry by 2023. It is also sprouting start-ups to ease all aspects of the business -- including the unsavory ones. [...]

Reliant Safety, which claims to watch over 20,000 apartment units nationwide, has a less colorful corporate pedigree. It is owned by the Omni Organization, a private developer founded in 2004 that "acquires, rehabilitates, builds and manages quality affordable housing throughout the United States," according to its website. The company claims it has acquired and managed more than 17,000 affordable housing units. Many of the properties it lists are in New York City. Omni's website features spotless apartment complexes under blue skies and boasts about sponsorship of after-school programs, food giveaways, and homeless transition programs. Reliant's website features videos that depict various violations detected by its surveillance cameras. The website has a page of "Lease Violations" it says its system has detected, which include things such as "pet urination in hallway," "hallway fistfight," "improper mattress disposal," "tenant slips in hallway," as well as several alleged assaults, videos of fistfights in hallways, drug sales at doorways and break-ins through smashed windows. Almost all of them show Black or brown people and almost all are labeled as being from The Bronx -- where, in 2016, Omni opened a 140-unit affordable housing building at 655 Morris Avenue that boasted about "state-of-the-art facial recognition building access" running on ubiquitous cameras in common areas. Reliant presents these as "case studies" and lists outcomes that include arrest and eviction. Part of its package of services is "illegal sublet detection" using biometrics submitted by tenants to suss out anyone not authorized to be there. While Reliant claims its products are rooting out illegal and dangerous activity, the use of surveillance and biometrics to further extend policing into minority communities are a major cause for concern to privacy advocates.

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Meet the Spy Tech Companies Helping Landlords Evict People

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  • Scummy, all around (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Firethorn ( 177587 ) on Thursday January 05, 2023 @10:50PM (#63183756) Homepage Journal

    On the one hand, this is very scummy behavior.

    On the other hand, this is expected behavior after the government is scummy and attempts to "make rent affordable" in about the worst way possible, forming it as what is effectively a tax on specific landlords(by making it so they can't charge market rates). In addition, by making it so that landlords can't charge market rates, it lowers the value of being a landlord, fewer companies and people will invest in units, and you actually make the situation worse.

    • by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Thursday January 05, 2023 @11:21PM (#63183808)

      Wait, what's so scummy about trying to stop things like people pissing in the hallways and fistfighting? Those are literally the things listed as to what this monitoring is for, and I'm willing to bet that pretty much all tenants are against those things just as much if not more than the landlord.

      The story even went full racist by both capitalizing "Black" and not capitalizing "brown" to make sure you know which racial group is deserving of this honor, and noting that most people who get prosecuted for things noted above belong to those two groups.

      • Prosecuted for criminal activity is different than getting evicted for contract violation.

        I'm fine with prosecuting those who get into fights in the hallways, but doing it specifically to get evictions in order to raise rents, that's the scummy part.

        • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          The problem with most of these sort of activities is that you have that one neighbour from hell and police don't give a crap because it's something minor.

          Getting him out regardless of reasoning is something that everyone else in the building would like. There's nothing scummy about it.

        • It is scummy. But so is coercion to force a landlord to rent at a specific price, rather than float with the market. It is way more scummy in fact. That was the OPs point. Guess you missed it.
          • It's way more scummy to limit prices to a reasonable level than it is to evict a family of 4 on the streets and quadruple the price for someone else? Because the family can sleep under the bridge, I guess?

            Martin Shkreli has nothing on you.

          • Great way to go scumbag! You're essentially defending authoritarian behavour almost at the level of Nineteen Eighty-four, minus the state incarceration & torture bits. Yeah, turn families out onto the streets, which is may more problematic & expensive to the tax payer & society, because landlords aren't making as much profit as they think they should.
            • ...and before you go "Market! The market! Will nobody think of the market!" How have we ended up with unsustainable housing crises in the first place? As far as I can tell, "the markets", i.e. business culture, is all about applying persistent downward pressure on the workers who actually generate the wealth in order to increase the profits of the few who own & rent out everything to them. Read a few undergraduate business studies textbooks; that's essentially what they say. I like democracy & commo
      • Wait, what's so scummy about trying to stop things like people pissing in the hallways and fistfighting?

        Wait. What? Where do you live?!

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @03:58AM (#63184148) Homepage Journal

      Wages don't keep up with market rates, and then you retire. Rent controls are the only way to prevent a lot of people being made homeless.

      Private landlords just have to accept the responsibility of owning someone else's home. If they don't like the responsibility, they should get out of the market.

    • If you have limited land it might be necessary as no extra developments might be possible. A lot of US cities are so dumbly constructed, they cant really expand making rent laws necessary, and the landlords knew of the laws when they invested in realestate, so don't come whining about things they knew about just because they want to make more money than they thought they could.

  • Make a bad rule... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by superdave80 ( 1226592 ) on Thursday January 05, 2023 @10:57PM (#63183766)
    ...and watch the market find a way to avoid that rule. Rent control is still one of the dumbest ideas ever that is nothing more than a forced transfer of money from the 'wrong' group to the 'right' group... according to certain politicians.
    • by Voyager529 ( 1363959 ) <voyager529 AT yahoo DOT com> on Friday January 06, 2023 @12:41AM (#63183958)

      Rent control is still one of the dumbest ideas ever that is nothing more than a forced transfer of money from the 'wrong' group to the 'right' group... according to certain politicians.

      The problem here is that there are no good solutions to this problem.

      I've got a friend who lives on the very Morris Ave cited in the summary, albeit a few blocks over. I can't speak for the 655 building, but the one she's in looks like it hasn't gotten a fresh coat of paint or reflooring since the Nixon administration. There's no such thing as 'hot water' in her apartment unless she boils it; I'd let it run for five minutes and it was barely warmer than the last Jacuzzi I was in. Walls...weren't well insulated for sound.

      Parking is utterly atrocious; only twice in three years have I found a parking space within three blocks of the building, meanwhile Morris Ave is impossible to drive down without feeling like you're threading a needle as you drive between double-parked cars. Anywhere else, the 2-bedroom apartment she's in would cost $1,000/month at best, based on its condition and quality-of-life. The average American household income in 2021 was $70,784 according to Google, so 1/3 of that would be about $1,900/month...but in that section of the Bronx, her rent is very likely the $4,000 quoted.

      What, exactly, is the solution? You don't like rent control...fine, that's understandable, but the problem with the dynamic here is that landlords get to vote themselves raises in ways that regular employees cannot. I can't just go into my boss's office and say "my salary is now an additional $300/month" the same way my landlord can inform me that my rent is going up by $300/month. If rent control isn't the solution, and the free market runs into other issues with true competition (finite land, finite permits, transportation problems, etc.), and collective bargaining finds itself impractical due to the absence of leverage by tenants, the only other option is that 'living in NYC is a luxury afforded solely by the wealthy, regardless of whether you're in a Fifth Ave penthouse or a run down apartment building in the Bronx'. This works until working class people who collect the garbage and run the cable lines and cook the Chinese food and drive the taxis can't afford to live within a two hour commute of their job, and now the value of the apartments go down because there are no garbage collectors or linemen or waiters or cab drivers to facilitate living in that apartment.

      Politicians gonna politician, you're right...but if the solution isn't rent control, I'm open to the alternative.

      • by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @01:31AM (#63184014)

        This works until working class people who collect the garbage and run the cable lines and cook the Chinese food and drive the taxis can't afford to live within a two hour commute of their job, and now the value of the apartments go down because there are no garbage collectors or linemen or waiters or cab drivers to facilitate living in that apartment.

        Politicians gonna politician, you're right...but if the solution isn't rent control, I'm open to the alternative.

        Isn't this how market self-regulates, though?

        And the description above (building quality, parking, etc) is EXACTLY a rent control effect. Landlords can't raise the prices, therefore they don't maintain the building. It's crowded because it's cheap compared to how it should be.

        • by St.Creed ( 853824 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @03:55AM (#63184146)

          Yes, this is how the market self controls, but it first takes a decade or more to make life hell for ordinary people and then it messes up the city for decades afterwards.

          I'm sure some Americans think that this is great ("free" market and all that as a principle, no matter who dies of it - just look at your health care). But realize that options for new housing are limited so the market isn't free: it's a monopoly. If you don't impose rent controls the price will be what the market will bear, and then it will collapse.

          Once again, this argument goes for health care too. And it is a worthless argument just as much there as here.

          • The options for new housing in New York City are not very limited and new units are built every year. A completely free market and insane government regulation are not the only option. Requiring each new building to include a certain number of smaller, more-affordable units is pretty reasonable. Encouraging (rather than discouraging) building taller towers with more units is good policy. Neither of those are central planning nor completely free market.
      • Finite permits are a government issue, not a market issue. Most of the problems in urban US will somewhat self-correct due to the new reality of work-at-home making those areas much less desirable.

        I am no fan of the current crop of Florida Republicans but there was a time when this state was well-governed (and mostly by Republicans). Each entity (county/city/etc) must have a master plan that projects population growth and allows for the building of additional housing units in order to match that growth.

      • I can't just go into my boss's office and say "my salary is now an additional $300/month" the same way my landlord can inform me that my rent is going up by $300/month.

        Yes you can. And your belief you can't is why your life sucks. It really is as easy as saying to your boss "I want $300 more or cya", exactly like your landlord can say "I want $300 more or bye-bye". Of course, both of you risk getting stuck with an asset that noone wants and which is not generating income (landlord's apartament, or your idle time) - so you both need to consider the question "are my assets really worth on the market $300 more than I'm getting right now". But the sooner you realize you both

      • The alternative is to move to Florida as Hochul is recommending.
      • What, exactly, is the solution? You don't like rent control...fine, that's understandable

        It's understandable only by invoking greed and a total lack of concern for the wellbeing of any other human. As a basic human need, housing should not be a profit center any more than medicine.

      • I've got a friend who lives on the very Morris Ave cited in the summary, albeit a few blocks over. I can't speak for the 655 building, but the one she's in looks like it hasn't gotten a fresh coat of paint or reflooring since the Nixon administration. There's no such thing as 'hot water' in her apartment unless she boils it; I'd let it run for five minutes and it was barely warmer than the last Jacuzzi I was in. Walls...weren't well insulated for sound.

        Parking is utterly atrocious; only twice in three yea

  • by jddj ( 1085169 )

    Film at eleven.

  • Mao did nothing wrong.
  • I'll bet landlords are guilty of more scummy/immoral/illegal behavior than all of their tenants combined. Where are the surveillance cameras to catch landlords doing things like harassing tenants and failing to maintain their buildings in the hopes of evicting people so they can jack up the rent?
    • Got some actual data that landlords are worse than tenants? The media are dominated by people who rent or are owner occupiers, so have no little experience of bad tenants. So they focus on what they know and ignore the travails of being a landlord.

      • by BeaverCleaver ( 673164 ) on Friday January 06, 2023 @05:38AM (#63184228)

        Being a landlord is like any other job. You don't get to just sit back and collect money, you have to DO something in exchange. For landlords, this means maintaining the property and common areas, and performing routine upkeep.

        I was an owner of one apartment in a building of several dozen. The majority of the other owners were outraged when they had to perform the minimum upkeep mandated by law - "do we really HAVE to get the fire extinguishers in the hall inspected? It's expensive!" Don't get me started on the roof repairs and mould. Not all landlords are pricks, but many of them behave like the barest minimum of sanitation and safety is somehow the same as stealing their money.

        Nobody is forced to become a landlord. Nobody is required to rent out a property. If the owner doesn't want wear and tear on the property, they can let it sit empty. Or they can live in it themselves. Or they can sell it. Just like a worker at any job can resign if they don't want to do the work.

    • I'll bet landlords are guilty of more scummy/immoral/illegal behavior than all of their tenants combined. Where are the surveillance cameras to catch landlords doing things like harassing tenants and failing to maintain their buildings in the hopes of evicting people so they can jack up the rent?

      A smart landlord hires a "property management company" to do all of that "bad stuff".

      It also gives the landlord a built-in "fall guy" when those issues start becoming "public news".

  • While Reliant claims its products are rooting out illegal and dangerous activity, the use of surveillance and biometrics to further extend policing into minority communities are a major cause for concern to privacy advocates.

    If you read this just as they've said it, the argument is that we should not police minority communities and protect them against illegal and dangerous activity. In what universe is that acceptable? You want crime to increase in minority communities? That's messed up.

  • ...to introduce stronger privacy laws for people in their own homes!

If you think nobody cares if you're alive, try missing a couple of car payments. -- Earl Wilson

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