When a Phone App Opens Your Apartment Door, but You Just Want a Key

 By Corina Knoll

 The third floor of the warehouse on West 45th Street in Manhattan was a sprawl of rotting wood when the two artists first arrived.

Yet through the windows came north light, softened and diffused. The newlywed couple envisioned their future studios and moved in.

They put down bamboo floors, erected walls, built a kitchen and bathroom and raised two daughters in a home they have loved for over four decades.

Then a new set of digital locks that rely on a smartphone app arrived.

Now, the couple — Mary Beth McKenzie, 72, and Tony Mysak, 93 — find themselves waging a legal battle over access to their home that has raised an analog question: Do renters have the right to an old-school metal key?

A lawsuit filed in October in Housing Court in Manhattan by the couple and three other tenants of the West 45th Street building demands that the landlord give them access to all the entryways without having to use a keyless entry system.

But it also has opened a wider debate over privacy, ageism and renter’s rights that has inspired new legislation in Albany.

image from: nytimes.com

 
At the heart of the dispute is a keyless entry system designed by the company Latch that has been installed in more than 1,000 buildings across the city.

Founded in 2013, the New York-based company saw a need for tenants and landlords to share access with guests, such as visiting family members, the electrician or a delivery person.

Users download the app, create a profile and can unlock doors via their phone or a key card or by punching in a code on the device’s numeric keypad. In some cases, the mechanism is compatible with an ordinary metal key.

 Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, a Democrat who represents the Upper West Side and parts of the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood (where Ms. McKenzie and Mr. Mysak live), introduced legislation on Wednesday that would require landlords to provide a “traditional” method of entry in all areas for tenants who prefer not to use a smart access system. It also puts strict limitations on any personal data collected by Latch or any similar digital-access company.

“This is probably the wave of the future,” Ms. Rosenthal said. “And so we have to make sure as we gallop toward that brave new world that there are privacy protections and alternatives to using apps. That people who are older or disabled or have other issues are not being inconvenienced.”

Michael P. Kozek, a lawyer for the Hell’s Kitchen loft tenants, said residents had been given mechanical keys to entrances where Latch is not installed, including their individual apartment doors and side doors that access stairways. But if they want to enter the lobby that leads to the elevator and mailboxes, residents must use the keyless entry system. The tenants have been given key cards that allow them to access the system without the use of a phone.

“As a practical matter, this particular group of tenants happen to be elderly or close to elderly and they’re not really technologically savvy,” Mr. Kozek said.

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