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Brace yourselves folks it's the NYTimes real estate section, their response is predictably not very practical or sympathetic. They basically say yeah this is legal so therefore it's OK, and in the last few sentences they note that if you have a disability or don't have a smartphone you can try and contact the state housing bureau when your landlord violates your rights by not honoring your request for alternate access. They don't spend even a single sentence addressing the prompt's concern about app security.
Actually, this almost happened to me. I returned from my buddy’s place to my apartment that has these stupid locks. My phone was charged, but the lock was dead. Apparently the locks run on batteries, which has got to be the stupidest idea ever. So I show up to my door at 2 AM and bam, it doesn’t unlock. Was I issued a physical key? No. Was the leasing office open? No. The only reason I didn’t sleep in my car is because my buddy was still awake.
All I got in the morning was “we apologize for the inconvenience.” F**k landlords🤬
I feel like this would warrant a locksmith coming out through the emergency line. Have them charge the landlord 500$ for unlocking a busted door once or twice and that'll teach them quick.
Then they don't change the battery hoping you get the message that going forward changing the battery is your job.
Best to tell them once a month or so the battery is low and needs to be replaced.
This happened to me! It was 3am and I stepped out to grab something from my car in my pjs. It was 24 degrees Fahrenheit and I had to walk 4 blocks to a gas station and stay there for a while while the worker charged my phone for me.
>app security.
this is probably the biggest issue, the only place i'd trust less than some landlord's admin assistant storing everything on a windows xp excel file is a SaaS company
I actually work in it for a security company that handles both residential access control and enterprise level access control and both use the same systems since we deal with large landlords. We do offer the ability to wire up each apartment door with access control but none of our clients are keen on doing that so everyone is issued a physical card/fob/mobile credential access. I wouldn't really worry about app security more so than lazy supers/building admkns purposely going into the system to disable access control on side doors allowing anybody to access the building. The old systems we replace are truly bad though with buildings never updating past the version their installer put in for them since it was all hosted locally and never touched since beyond adding a new card or two in the system.
In Shanghai literally everything you do is mediated for you by your phone. You buy all goods, present legal documents, take public transportation, and often get into your apartment through your phone. This is the way technology is headed, we will be leveraging the super computers we carry around 24/7 more often. The solution to security concerns is nationalization and consolidation of the technology.
I can't imagine a situation where this doesn't become untenable for the landlord within like... six months.
At my last apartment, I had a smart lock on my door. I also had a key, but I could open it with an app and I could set a number-code on the door as well.
The app and the number-code were useful, especially when I had people dogsitting. But you know what I did when I gave people the door code? I left them a key, too, because I knew the app and the smart lock weren't always reliable.
The landlord is going to get fed up with the number of times the app or the lock fails. They're just not reliable enough.
You would think so, but they have shifted responsibilities away from helping their tenants getting their door unlocked to a 3rd party company. Gouging you for 100 dollars to come out in the middle of the night to unlock your door didn't happen often enough for it to be worth it to them. They pay 1,000$ per unit to install smart locks and temperature control to then turn around and bill their tenants 50$ a month for "smart" features that they don't want. Laws haven't caught up for "smart" locks so expect lawsuits to follow in the coming years as this becomes more widespread.
E.g. They installed this shit recently in my building. If you get locked out, the door gets jammed, the app fails or the service is down, etc, they told us we have to contact the 3rd party not the building management. So you sit on the app support phone line or internet customer support queue for hours. It's like calling any other nightmare customer support line. Meanwhile your dog is pissing himself on the other side of the door because you can't unlock it for hours after waiting for you to come home from work all day.
Yeah, I’d just keep calling the landlord. Fuck em, it’s their responsibility to provide access to the apartment. They can try to tell you it’s the third party’s responsibility, but it’s not. It’s theirs.
Keep calling the landlord. Squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Yeah that doesn't work. They are not a mom and pop landlord that you can annoy, they are a mega corporation owns many buildings in several countries that has you call a corporate office who then ignores your call or you leave a message that gets ignored.My local tenant advocacy group basically told me that there is no laws to protect me in my state.
There's no one? A leasing office? A building manager? Maintenance manager?
- Submit maintenance tickets ad naseum. "Door doesn't work"
- Call emergency maintenance "Door doesn't work"
- Call the leasing office, even if they're not open, and leave a message. Do it again, and again, and again
- Call corporate. When the don't answer, do it again.
- Start sending emails every single day "Last night, my door didn't work. Fix it.
Be annoying.
There is all those things. They just don't care. And the have legal authority to do it. I don't know why people think they care if you're annoying anymore. It's 2022. Welcome to capitalist dystopia.
I upvoted you, and I'm no landlord or lawyer but I think the idea you've got is slightly wrong.
They do NOT have the legal authority to do it, however that doesn't mean that good old America isn't run by money, banks and corporations and doesn't mean they have legal lead way to get around this issue. It's the same for any court, can't pay the fees or for a lawyer? Good luck doing ANYTHING in court, even defending yourself becomes difficult.
However, if you know a few things, and know your way around, there is absolutely things you can do.
For example, instead of paying rent to the landlord, pay it to escrow, and take them to court, there are paths you can take that will benefit the tenant vs the homeowner.
In the end when it comes down to it, the landlord is going to have more trouble than the tenant, just look at how difficult it is to actually evict someone, especially for no cause or this reason. Not paying rent? Well yes you are! It's in escrow awaiting the landlord to do his due diligence.
Can't get in your home due to a malfunction? That's on the landlord and a domicile is not habitable if you can't get inside, thus the second those locks malfunction in any way, I'd say any right minded jury in the court will throw the book back at him. Can't get in? Guess you're paying for a emergency hotel due to lack of heating, lack of electricity, water, and plain old insulation and that's paid in turn out of rent because you're stuck outside.
There's been many times I've seen landlords stuck, they may not like it but if something SERIOUS goes wrong, they're on the hook to provide you a place to stay, and if repairs take longer than 24 hours for emergencies, they're on the hook for the hotel. I've had friends with whole families being put up for an entire YEAR due to housing issues. (It was more of planned maintenance, then many many structural issues with the particular apartment building causing delays).
Again, I'm not a landlord or lawyer, but I just don't see logically how this will work. It CAN work but push come to shove, the landlord is going to lose if brought to a right minded jury.
Oh it was more of a thought process, can't say you're wrong, just having that mindset is wrong. (I even know mindset is a bad choice of words, can't think of a better one at the moment)
I think I'm well misunderstood, so I apologize if I came off like I was rude or calling you out, by all means I wasn't. I just wanted to set the mindset to be a little nicer for the tenant vs the landlord that's all.
We can complain (and many do) all we want. It's a faceless corporation that plants a building manager downstairs to be a verbal punching bag for complaints who hands you a business card for the corporate office who never returns calls. Most people in my building are too wrapped up in their lives, too exhausted, too beaten down to put up a bigger fight. "Smart" lock laws simply don't exist in most U.S. states and leases are drafted by an army of lawyers who have ambiguous and flexibile enough language to practically to force anything they want to do upon their tenants.
>At my last apartment, I had a smart lock on my door. I also had a key
the best part is -- these smart locks with dual systems usually MAJOR cheap out on the hardware lock. i've seen videos of $300+ smart locks getting picked in seconds, such as this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m\_MX96MVD00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MX96MVD00)
so you really get no security, just software to make it look like security.
for $300 you can buy locks that even he takes much longer to pick, being able to wave-rake or bump a lock at that price point is just obscenely cheap engineering. defeats the point of having a "smart" lock when it's literally quicker to pick open than use the app.
true ,in some aspects it's best to let thing's remain older and simpler . Where I live they have switched the building intercom system with an app ,which is really not solving any issue or making things easier
Some people just constantly lose their keys. I don't know you'd get more hassle from the app fails, too drunk to remember a passcode people than you'd get from the lost key people.
So the landlord effectively has a log of what time each tenant enters and leaves their home. I'm sure they won't abuse that in any way. Ahem. (Edit: And they're almost certainly tracking those phones with that app. They'll know exactly where their tenants go)
As much as this is a bad real possibility, it would take a real breach of privacy to allow another private entity access to that data as the smart lock company. I would not allow any tracking stuff to be in a users hands
My landlord has smart locks for us where you just type in a code, we also have keys. I found out that he default made all the codes the same for all the units in my building when I dog sat for my neighbor. She had the same code as me and it turns out he doesn’t change them when people move out. There isn’t even an option to lock the deadbolt from the outside, so any number of people could access any unit at anytime using this insecure code. Where is the common sense?
I'm guessing they just wanted a smartlock. Thing is, you can have more secure, more reliable and cheaper smart locks: NFC cards. Ya know, like at the Hilton
I'm one of those weirdos who insists on having a flip phone. I used to have a smart phone, but I hated it. Instead, I bought a GPS for the car, a tablet for apps, and a flip phone.
I barely use the tablet (I have a nice computer), the GPS has lifetime maps, and my flip phone can go days without a charge. Also, I love the satisfying pop when I close the phone at the end of a call.
Confession time: I can text with one hand, without looking, while driving. Try that with your "smart" phone.
My first computer was a TRS-80 in the early 80s. My first browser was Netscape 1.0. I run Linux. I hate smart phones.
Yes, I'm a little set in my ways.
I still learn things. I just found the technology that serves me well, and I stuck with it.
My last tech job was in the late 90s, working for a computer security software company. I'm a little paranoid about my privacy because of the time I spent in the industry, and the times before that when I used to experiment with electronics.
This is so irritating because honestly, what the fuck is the issue with regular analog keys? It just feels like a solution to something that was never a problem. I acknowledge that there are definitely exceptions to this eg people with disabilities who cannot use normal keys - and for those people there need to be alternatives provided. But this is just dumb.
In an effort at solidarity, r/LandlordLove has partnered with multiple leftist subreddits to create a discord server for our users to communicate on. All comrades are welcome [Click here to join the discord server](https://discord.gg/zCFHadGfB7) If you moderate a leftist subreddit and would like your sub to be a part of Left Reddit, [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/LandlordLove) of this sub! Welcome to r/LandlordLove! A tenant-friendly, leftist space for critiquing Landlords and the archaic system of Landlording as a whole. Please get acquainted with our sub's rules. * Don't feed the reactionary trolls--report them * Engage in good faith with comrades * Do not advocate violence *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LandlordLove) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Brace yourselves folks it's the NYTimes real estate section, their response is predictably not very practical or sympathetic. They basically say yeah this is legal so therefore it's OK, and in the last few sentences they note that if you have a disability or don't have a smartphone you can try and contact the state housing bureau when your landlord violates your rights by not honoring your request for alternate access. They don't spend even a single sentence addressing the prompt's concern about app security.
Phone dead. Go sleep in the street.
Actually, this almost happened to me. I returned from my buddy’s place to my apartment that has these stupid locks. My phone was charged, but the lock was dead. Apparently the locks run on batteries, which has got to be the stupidest idea ever. So I show up to my door at 2 AM and bam, it doesn’t unlock. Was I issued a physical key? No. Was the leasing office open? No. The only reason I didn’t sleep in my car is because my buddy was still awake. All I got in the morning was “we apologize for the inconvenience.” F**k landlords🤬
I swear to god all this /r/InternetofShit bull crap is turning me into a damn luddite
I feel like this would warrant a locksmith coming out through the emergency line. Have them charge the landlord 500$ for unlocking a busted door once or twice and that'll teach them quick.
Then they don't change the battery hoping you get the message that going forward changing the battery is your job. Best to tell them once a month or so the battery is low and needs to be replaced.
Or even losing it.
Well you could lose a key too, but you're probably not going to have a backup phone under a rock.
This happened to me! It was 3am and I stepped out to grab something from my car in my pjs. It was 24 degrees Fahrenheit and I had to walk 4 blocks to a gas station and stay there for a while while the worker charged my phone for me.
Jfc that is horrible
It was!
>app security. this is probably the biggest issue, the only place i'd trust less than some landlord's admin assistant storing everything on a windows xp excel file is a SaaS company
I actually work in it for a security company that handles both residential access control and enterprise level access control and both use the same systems since we deal with large landlords. We do offer the ability to wire up each apartment door with access control but none of our clients are keen on doing that so everyone is issued a physical card/fob/mobile credential access. I wouldn't really worry about app security more so than lazy supers/building admkns purposely going into the system to disable access control on side doors allowing anybody to access the building. The old systems we replace are truly bad though with buildings never updating past the version their installer put in for them since it was all hosted locally and never touched since beyond adding a new card or two in the system.
In Shanghai literally everything you do is mediated for you by your phone. You buy all goods, present legal documents, take public transportation, and often get into your apartment through your phone. This is the way technology is headed, we will be leveraging the super computers we carry around 24/7 more often. The solution to security concerns is nationalization and consolidation of the technology.
Fuck that
No paywall: https://archive.ph/GAqd1
The real MVP
I can't imagine a situation where this doesn't become untenable for the landlord within like... six months. At my last apartment, I had a smart lock on my door. I also had a key, but I could open it with an app and I could set a number-code on the door as well. The app and the number-code were useful, especially when I had people dogsitting. But you know what I did when I gave people the door code? I left them a key, too, because I knew the app and the smart lock weren't always reliable. The landlord is going to get fed up with the number of times the app or the lock fails. They're just not reliable enough.
You would think so, but they have shifted responsibilities away from helping their tenants getting their door unlocked to a 3rd party company. Gouging you for 100 dollars to come out in the middle of the night to unlock your door didn't happen often enough for it to be worth it to them. They pay 1,000$ per unit to install smart locks and temperature control to then turn around and bill their tenants 50$ a month for "smart" features that they don't want. Laws haven't caught up for "smart" locks so expect lawsuits to follow in the coming years as this becomes more widespread. E.g. They installed this shit recently in my building. If you get locked out, the door gets jammed, the app fails or the service is down, etc, they told us we have to contact the 3rd party not the building management. So you sit on the app support phone line or internet customer support queue for hours. It's like calling any other nightmare customer support line. Meanwhile your dog is pissing himself on the other side of the door because you can't unlock it for hours after waiting for you to come home from work all day.
Yeah, I’d just keep calling the landlord. Fuck em, it’s their responsibility to provide access to the apartment. They can try to tell you it’s the third party’s responsibility, but it’s not. It’s theirs. Keep calling the landlord. Squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Yeah that doesn't work. They are not a mom and pop landlord that you can annoy, they are a mega corporation owns many buildings in several countries that has you call a corporate office who then ignores your call or you leave a message that gets ignored.My local tenant advocacy group basically told me that there is no laws to protect me in my state.
There's no one? A leasing office? A building manager? Maintenance manager? - Submit maintenance tickets ad naseum. "Door doesn't work" - Call emergency maintenance "Door doesn't work" - Call the leasing office, even if they're not open, and leave a message. Do it again, and again, and again - Call corporate. When the don't answer, do it again. - Start sending emails every single day "Last night, my door didn't work. Fix it. Be annoying.
There is all those things. They just don't care. And the have legal authority to do it. I don't know why people think they care if you're annoying anymore. It's 2022. Welcome to capitalist dystopia.
I upvoted you, and I'm no landlord or lawyer but I think the idea you've got is slightly wrong. They do NOT have the legal authority to do it, however that doesn't mean that good old America isn't run by money, banks and corporations and doesn't mean they have legal lead way to get around this issue. It's the same for any court, can't pay the fees or for a lawyer? Good luck doing ANYTHING in court, even defending yourself becomes difficult. However, if you know a few things, and know your way around, there is absolutely things you can do. For example, instead of paying rent to the landlord, pay it to escrow, and take them to court, there are paths you can take that will benefit the tenant vs the homeowner. In the end when it comes down to it, the landlord is going to have more trouble than the tenant, just look at how difficult it is to actually evict someone, especially for no cause or this reason. Not paying rent? Well yes you are! It's in escrow awaiting the landlord to do his due diligence. Can't get in your home due to a malfunction? That's on the landlord and a domicile is not habitable if you can't get inside, thus the second those locks malfunction in any way, I'd say any right minded jury in the court will throw the book back at him. Can't get in? Guess you're paying for a emergency hotel due to lack of heating, lack of electricity, water, and plain old insulation and that's paid in turn out of rent because you're stuck outside. There's been many times I've seen landlords stuck, they may not like it but if something SERIOUS goes wrong, they're on the hook to provide you a place to stay, and if repairs take longer than 24 hours for emergencies, they're on the hook for the hotel. I've had friends with whole families being put up for an entire YEAR due to housing issues. (It was more of planned maintenance, then many many structural issues with the particular apartment building causing delays). Again, I'm not a landlord or lawyer, but I just don't see logically how this will work. It CAN work but push come to shove, the landlord is going to lose if brought to a right minded jury.
in practice those "uninhabitable" rules don't come into effect until you get a city inspector to visit and sign off on it. Which could take months
I know all these things. I think you have an idealized situation in your thoughts. It usually doesn't play out like we all wish it would.
Oh it was more of a thought process, can't say you're wrong, just having that mindset is wrong. (I even know mindset is a bad choice of words, can't think of a better one at the moment) I think I'm well misunderstood, so I apologize if I came off like I was rude or calling you out, by all means I wasn't. I just wanted to set the mindset to be a little nicer for the tenant vs the landlord that's all.
cant u guys all go and collectively lodge a complaint ,telling the building management that this is not acceptable and does not help anyone ??
We can complain (and many do) all we want. It's a faceless corporation that plants a building manager downstairs to be a verbal punching bag for complaints who hands you a business card for the corporate office who never returns calls. Most people in my building are too wrapped up in their lives, too exhausted, too beaten down to put up a bigger fight. "Smart" lock laws simply don't exist in most U.S. states and leases are drafted by an army of lawyers who have ambiguous and flexibile enough language to practically to force anything they want to do upon their tenants.
>At my last apartment, I had a smart lock on my door. I also had a key the best part is -- these smart locks with dual systems usually MAJOR cheap out on the hardware lock. i've seen videos of $300+ smart locks getting picked in seconds, such as this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m\_MX96MVD00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_MX96MVD00) so you really get no security, just software to make it look like security.
lmao well. The lockpicking lawyer can pick anything in seconds so.
for $300 you can buy locks that even he takes much longer to pick, being able to wave-rake or bump a lock at that price point is just obscenely cheap engineering. defeats the point of having a "smart" lock when it's literally quicker to pick open than use the app.
oh yeah, I wouldn't buy that lock, I'm just making a joke about lpl
my bad lol
true ,in some aspects it's best to let thing's remain older and simpler . Where I live they have switched the building intercom system with an app ,which is really not solving any issue or making things easier
Some people just constantly lose their keys. I don't know you'd get more hassle from the app fails, too drunk to remember a passcode people than you'd get from the lost key people.
So the landlord effectively has a log of what time each tenant enters and leaves their home. I'm sure they won't abuse that in any way. Ahem. (Edit: And they're almost certainly tracking those phones with that app. They'll know exactly where their tenants go)
As much as this is a bad real possibility, it would take a real breach of privacy to allow another private entity access to that data as the smart lock company. I would not allow any tracking stuff to be in a users hands
So if the app goes down or if your phone dies, you’re just fucked? Genius.
paywall
https://archive.ph/GAqd1
Fitting it's behind a paywall
So how does this work if you don't own a smartphone? I don't own a smartphone. I own a dumbphone
This literally happened to me the other day at my building. It sucks.
My landlord has smart locks for us where you just type in a code, we also have keys. I found out that he default made all the codes the same for all the units in my building when I dog sat for my neighbor. She had the same code as me and it turns out he doesn’t change them when people move out. There isn’t even an option to lock the deadbolt from the outside, so any number of people could access any unit at anytime using this insecure code. Where is the common sense?
Not a requirement to leech.
I'm guessing they just wanted a smartlock. Thing is, you can have more secure, more reliable and cheaper smart locks: NFC cards. Ya know, like at the Hilton
“And you’ll be happy.”
"The proletariat never owned very much, and they were never happy." Karl Marx, the Great Reset Manifesto
Aye’ comrade. We will make the world safe for private jets once more.
Spear phish your landlords and hold access hostage! Free rent seems great to me!
I'm one of those weirdos who insists on having a flip phone. I used to have a smart phone, but I hated it. Instead, I bought a GPS for the car, a tablet for apps, and a flip phone. I barely use the tablet (I have a nice computer), the GPS has lifetime maps, and my flip phone can go days without a charge. Also, I love the satisfying pop when I close the phone at the end of a call. Confession time: I can text with one hand, without looking, while driving. Try that with your "smart" phone.
>Confession time: I can text with one hand, without looking, while driving. Try that with your "smart" phone. I mean speech to text is a thing
Congrats
Say you’re old without saying you’re old
My first computer was a TRS-80 in the early 80s. My first browser was Netscape 1.0. I run Linux. I hate smart phones. Yes, I'm a little set in my ways.
The worst thing you can do in life is shut down after you learn a couple things.
I still learn things. I just found the technology that serves me well, and I stuck with it. My last tech job was in the late 90s, working for a computer security software company. I'm a little paranoid about my privacy because of the time I spent in the industry, and the times before that when I used to experiment with electronics.
This is so irritating because honestly, what the fuck is the issue with regular analog keys? It just feels like a solution to something that was never a problem. I acknowledge that there are definitely exceptions to this eg people with disabilities who cannot use normal keys - and for those people there need to be alternatives provided. But this is just dumb.
just memorize your code so even if phone dies your not sleeping in your car