Most landlords, in my experience, don't invest in the high-end RFID systems that have real security.
So they have a database full of addresses together with their digital keys?
What could possibly go wrong...
Locks are for honest people.
You can get a great lock, but what they lock into is usually a very weak link.
This seems like a reasonable policy that other cities with renters might benefit from, if they don't already have something similar.
"Please fax this handwritten form to this foreign phone number and then you can collect the key from this office on the other side of town only at 3pm on a tuesday. Oh - now you've shown up we need ID, and we only accept birth certificates."
For reference: https://sfrb.org/section-3713-keys
If they claim unlawful occupancy, you can invoke the Kim 2.0 amendments of the rent ordinance which basically prevent an SF landlord from denying you the roommates of your choice.
If a landlord denies a roommate under the Kim 2.0 amendments, you can almost certainly get your rent cut in half by petitioning the rent board.
Not quite sure what's different with that situation from before, other than slightly cheaper keys.
1) The landlord is _never_ allowed to enter your house 2) In an emergency, the firemen would just break the door.
Granted, I've only rented out an apartment once, but it was from a big local rental agency and I got three keys despite being the only tenant in a single bedroom apartment. My current studio apartment (although not a rental) also has three keys.
Mine didn't though I'm sure I could have gotten extra ones if I just asked.
I've been tempted on many, many occasions to give the neighbors a dollar to get a duplicate key made so they aren't knocking on the door/window at all hours because they obviously don't have enough keys for the amount of people living there.
Basically, turning this from an apartment to more of a long term hotel. Is it a fair trade for a rent subsidy? Will it become standard in all rentals?
https://www.landlordology.com/implied-covenant-quiet-enjoyme...
It seems this would only stop non-tenets from having access to the facilities. At least without being accompanied by actual tenants.
That link is not the best. Quiet Enjoyment does cover the tenant's right to have visitors. A landlord cannot interfere with that right, including by blocking access to the unit by unaccompanied visitors who don't have the tenant's face.
Facial recognition would violate that.
My guess would be the mentioned privacy is relating to the dwelling itself, that is, the landlord can’t come hang out in your living room or hide cameras in your apartment.
Plenty of apartments have 24/7 concierge at the front door and monitored entrances. That isn’t considered violating privacy even though the concierge can see you come in and out.
Would a computerized system that does the same thing necessarily violate the legal definition of privacy ? I suspect it would be hard to tell at this point.
No doubt cases like this will be tried as people test the bounds of that legal definition.
If you can hire a human to do it and it is fine then I don't think any automated systems would be violating privacy.
Also there is no privacy in public places and you can probably conclude that you are in a public place before you enter. Eg. Their is no privacy at the checkpoint.
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?
So to answer your question - maybe? But most likely not. And it's not necessarily evil.
I would love to be able to run my own software on my iPhone in an unfettered way.
I've lived in dozens of non-rent controlled apartments, and it's almost always hell. You always have some douchebag that is above, or below or next to you who can't manage to respect personal boundaries of noise or space or smell. I would have much more enjoyed the experience if there was some level of enforcement.
Congrats, you are now a certified authoritarian.
Why are you jumping to the conclusion that is has to go this way? Very possible that a landlord would be happy to simply have someone log a face and then go back to that person if there was a particular and legal reason to know who the face was. Now sure if they wanted maybe they could google image search the face and find out who it was. But per my other comment there is nothing to prevent a building owner (landlord or otherwise) from installing a camera and filming everyone that enters a building and actually even posting that face on the internet for everyone to see. (Would not go down very well of course but it would be legal as it's a public place). If you want to hang out in front of Shake Shack (arbitrary) with your camera all day and take pictures of everyone who enters and buys a burger or a shake you can do that.
Same reason we put on a seatbelt when we go for a drive.
> In order to let neighbors who might not have seen the letter know what was potentially coming, five tenants convened in the lobby of one of the two buildings on a late October morning to spread the word. A few days later, those five tenants — like most of the residents at Atlantic, black women — received a notice from property management with pictures of the gathering taken from a security camera; they were told that the lobby was not “a place to solicit, electioneer, hang out or loiter.”
> New York State law, in fact, grants tenants the right to meet peacefully in nearly any location in a building as long as they are not obstructing passageways. Management maintains that tenants were getting in the way even if the pictures did not clearly indicate that.