Landlord Technologies of Gentrification: Facial Recognition and Building Access Technologies in New York City Homes

By Erin McElroy, Manon Vergerio, and Paula Garcia-Salazar

This report examines the increasing deployment of landlord technologies in New York City (NYC) housing, and the problems this creates and intensifies. These technologies include facial recognition, closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, and other algorithmic, biometric, and appbased building access technologies specifically designed to be deployed in tenant housing and surrounding public and private space. We map the genealogies and geographies of these surveillance systems, looking at intersections of surveillance, carcerality, and gentrification. In addition, we look at why it is that New York has become an epicenter of what the real estate industry describes as the “property technology,” or the “proptech” industry. This term encompasses the platforms, systems, algorithms, and data regimes connecting the real estate and technology industries in residential, commercial, and industrial buildings.

Section Summaries

Section 2

We explore how and why New York City emerged as a hub of landlord technology. We unearth Big Data experiments of the latter half of the 20th century, while also excavating how new technologies have been deployed by the city and by landlords in the wake of various crises, including the war on crime, the war on terror, the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, and Hurricane Sandy. In each of these, we show, big tech mobilized through the logics of crisis capitalism to unleash largely untested technological solutionism to incite harm along familiar race, class, and gender lines, and reproduce racial capitalist geographies of property, place, and home. This, we continue to highlight, has been no less true during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Section 3

We contextualize how landlord tech automates processes of gentrification and racial dispossession. By first mapping rezoning histories and geographies in the city, we look at cartographic technologies of racial capitalism. As we note, new facial recognition landlord tech systems are often deployed along rezoning borders. They can be interpreted as strategic tools to augment property value by “catching” tenants for petty lease violations and raising rents. We look at examples in several large low-income and affordable housing complexes, such as Atlantic Plaza Towers, Taino Towers, Knickerbocker Village, and Morris Avenue Apartments. We also explore how new facial recognition systems are employed in smaller New York City buildings and lofts and how “digital doorman” companies are incubating in NYC and then expanding globally.

Section 4

We turn to the carceral effects of landlord tech surveillance. We begin by outlining the history of CCTV camera surveillance, particularly as it has been deployed in housing administered by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). We draw upon tenant testimonies from public hearings and press conferences to elaborate on the carceral effects of forced home surveillance, looking to stories of how landlord tech (e.g., facial recognition, algorithmic, and robotic systems) transforms the home into a prison-like space.

Section 5

We offer a policy summary of anti-surveillance legislation, looking at federal, state, and local laws that partially regulate facial recognition. We also look at several potential policies that could help regulate facial recognition in the realm of housing, or prevent petty lease violations from being used as grounds for eviction.

Section 6/7

We offer organizing tools and strategies for resisting, refusing, and thwarting the implementation of landlord tech in one’s home. Much of this draws upon the ongoing work of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Alliance, a group that came together in Brooklyn following the success of the tenants at Atlantic Plaza Towers in preventing their landlord from deploying a biometric heat mapping facial recognition entry system. We also include instructions for how to request information from local government bodies to learn more about landlord tech in public housing, and how to scrape data from private landlord tech websites and property listing sites to better understand landlord tech geographies.

Key Report Highlights Below

Included Testimonials

  • “Cities are crowded, often dangerous places, with the gap between rich and poor growing. We need a way to live safely but also comfortably next door to one another.”

    General Farkash, former head of Israeli Military Intelligence and founder for FST21

  • “We’re in an affordable housing complex. Why do we need this expensive system? [. . .] I’ve read many news articles about the facial recognition systems and they mention how it ’s biased against people of color, against women.”

    Christina Zang, tenant and co-chair of Knickerbocker Village Tenant Association

  • “We know that the building management wants these big, beautiful apartments back so they can remarket it to ‘the new tenant.’”

    Tranae Moran, Atlantic Plaza Tower tenant

  • “With gentrification phasing out the diversity in neighborhoods, these technologies will be used as surveillance tactics to essentially speed up that process”

    Fabian Rogers, Atlantic Plaza Tower Tenant

  • “We as residents do not want to feel as if though we are prisoners, tagged and monitored as soon as we make a move . . . We have been continuously treated like criminals in our own homes.”

    Tasliym Francis, Atlantic Plaza Tower Tenant

  • “An extensive DVR-security camera system with approximately 175 cameras, including a state of the art facial recognition system at the front entrance, will provide safety for tenants and the public.”

    Omni New York LLC, 655 Morris Avenue

Company Profiles

  • PRODUCTS: Gateguard.xyz, LookLock.xyz, SubletSpy

    FUNCTION: “Digital doorman” suite that uses AI in order to monitor building access and detect illegal subletting and lease violations so that landlords can evict tenants and raise the rent.

    LOCATION: Headquartered in New York City

    FOUNDING YEAR: 2014

    FOUNDER: Ari Teman

    HISTORY: Ari Teman launched GateGuard after SubletSpy.com, which was inspired by his own experience of having an Airbnb subletter use his apartment for an orgy that allegedly cost him $67K in damages.

    SCALE: Over 1,000 buildings as of 2019 in New York, and installations across North America, Europe, South America, and Australia

    COMPANY DESCRIPTION: “Teman makes Artificial Intelligence-driven hardware & software that protects thousands of buildings & homes for over 3000 top landlords, management companies, investors, brokers, and vendors across the planet. We have the #1 performing artificial intelligence & image recognition in the world in a number of categories. We crunch over 600,000,000 rows of data on your city every day. We are PhDs, MAs, and senior engineers in the USA (NYC, MIA), Israel, Ukraine, and Russia.”

    PRODUCT INTEGRATIONS: Tenants can remotely open doors, track deliveries and packages; Property managers can track entries and who gets in and out of the building, and video footage to evict tenants if they find an illegal sublet. Every visitor is logged and photographed. Option to add a facial recognition option.

    RENT DEREGULATION AND EVICTIONS: Direct connection between Teman surveillance installation and rent deregulation in how they market themselves to landlords: “A smart intercom company called Teman GateGuard has been pitching its surveillance technology to landlords in New York as a way to sidestep rent-control regulations in the city.”

    LABOR: Labor outsourced to Eastern Europe and Israel.

  • PRODUCTS: ClearID, Security Center, OmniCast, Synergis, AutoVu (ALPR), FaceFirst (facial recognition).

    FUNCTION: Provider of IP video surveillance, access control, and license plate recognition solutions in single platforms.

    LOCATION: Headquartered in Montreal, Canada

    FOUNDING YEAR: 1997

    FOUNDER: Pierre Racz

    HISTORY: It started as a physical security system company in 1997 and took off with its first line of IP-based video surveillance systems shortly thereafter. As the company has grown, it has bought out smaller companies in the market.

    SCALE: Across multiple governments, college campuses, airports worldwide. Twenty-eight cities contract with Genetec and explicitly use their technology to manage security managed by those cities' public housing authorities.

    COMPANY DESCRIPTION: “Leading technology provider of business intelligence, unified physical security, public safety, and operations. Genetec develops open-platform software, hardware and cloud-based services for the physical security and public safety industry. Its flagship product, Security Center, unifies IPbased video surveillance, access control and automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) into one platform. A global innovator since 1997, Genetec is headquartered in Montreal, Canada, and serves enterprise and government organizations via an integrated network of resellers, integrators and consultants in over 80 countries. Genetec was founded on the principle of innovation and remains at the forefront of emerging technologies that unify physical security systems.”

    INDUSTRY EXPANSION: Genetec maintains a “partner ecosystem” with smaller companies in order to utilize their technologies. One such company, FST21 (later rebranded to FST Biometrics), supplied the facial recognition system at Knickerbocker Village and Taino Towers. FST Biometrics and Genetec announced their “strategic partnership” in 2017. The following year, reports about the company shutting down made their way around security industry websites, but there is no indication that the Genetec security systems that utilized FST Biometrics technology have gone out of service.

  • PRODUCTS: Vornado Realty L.P.

    FUNCTION: Engages in the ownership and operation of office, retail, and showroom properties in the United States. It also has a subsidiary security camera system, GMSC, that controls its facial recognition products. GMSC’s facial recognition system is described as using “entirely frictionless...tenant enrollment photos and facial characteristics to grant secure access” to Vornado’s buildings.”

    LOCATION: Headquartered in Maryland but mostly operating out of New York.

    FOUNDING YEAR: 1959/1998

    FOUNDER: Steven Roth

    HISTORY: Vornado began as a discount retail chain called Two Guys. Vornado, Inc. was founded in the 1950s and transitioned to a real estate holdings company after Steven Roth acquired it in 1980. Vornado Realty L.P. was then founded in 1998.

    SCALE: Vornado owns a huge amount of commercial real estate in New York, including the buildings that house Facebook and Amazon’s New York Offices. Some sources call them New York’s largest commercial landlord. It is also active in Washington DC.

    • Facial Recognition by GMC is installed in at least 12 of its buildings.

    COMMERCIAL LANDLORD FACIAL RECOGNITION: Vornado’s holdings are almost entirely office or retail, save for some high-end residential buildings in Manhattan. However, the sheer scale of their real estate holdings is informative about the spread of facial recognition access tech in New York at large — as of late 2020, Vornado planned to install facial recognition systems in all of their real estate holdings. Vornado has access to 2,500 cameras and provides the NYPD with direct access to “several hundred camera feeds” in its control. The integration of a purely private real estate holdings company with the largest police force in the world raises significant questions about future applications of facial recognition systems deployed in private residential buildings that also provide the police with data.

  • PRODUCTS: Carson

    FUNCTION: Digital doormen and app-based property management platforms.

    LOCATION: Headquartered in New York City

    FOUNDING YEAR: 2017

    FOUNDER: Guy Blachman. His previous startup, ActiveBuilding/MyBuilding, was acquired by RealPage in 2013.

    HISTORY: Carson was started by a group of property management software and hardware industry executives in 2017. To streamline its services, Carson has partnered with Comelit, an intercom provider, and SMARTAir, an electronic key provider for multifamily properties.

    SCALE: 300 buildings. Based on Instagram posts and tagged locations, Carson has been deployed in multiple cities, including NYC, SF, and London.

    PRODUCT DESCRIPTION: “With the One-App Resident Experience and 24/7 remote doorman, Carson brings the full service lifestyle to unstaffed buildings, at an affordable price.”

    • Other services provided through the Carson app include service requests, payments, camera security for all entrances, and communications between residents and management through one integrated app, just as larger buildings have – tailored to the needs of a smaller community.

    COVID-19 MARKETING: Instagram marketing has focused on the uptick in package and grocery deliveries as a new trend during COVID-19, advertising Carson as a great way to prevent package theft.

  • PRODUCTS: Stonelock True Frictionless Solutions

    FUNCTION: Facial recognition entry systems secure biometric access control solutions.

    LOCATION: Overland Park, KS

    FOUNDING YEAR: 2011

    FOUNDER: Colleen Dunlap

    HISTORY: StoneLock spent nearly three years developing the algorithm and software/hardware for their products. They officially launched their products in 2013, growing over the next two years to bring them into the physical security market, partnering with HID, and PAC systems including Lenel, Honeywell, and Tyco. In September 2017, StoneLock launched a new platform called StoneLock Gateway, which allows for the seamless management, sharing, and deployment of biometric data across different PAC systems.

    SCALE: Services hundreds of large Fortune500 companies. Attempted to install their facial recognition system at Atlantic Plaza Towers.

    PRODUCT DESCRIPTION: “StoneLock delivers a frictionless, trusted, and revolutionary approach to secure facial authentication.”

    COVID-19 MARKETING: Based on an April 1, 2021 Twitter post, they appear to be marketing the need for "touchless" entrance in the wake of Covid: "Requests for touchless facial biometric readers are on the rise as companies prepare for their employees' return to work. The StoneLock GO reader now integrates with your current or future @KantechAccess Control systems."

  • PRODUCTS: Latch

    FUNCTION: Keyless entry, guest management, and package deliveries.

    LOCATION: Headquartered in New York City

    FOUNDING YEAR: 2014

    FOUNDERS: Brian Jones, Luke Schoenfelder, Thomas Meyerhoffer

    SCALE: They have a presence nationwide, including at least 1,000 buildings in New York. In 2019, Latch expanded their inhome deliveries to Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, Miami and Seattle through a partnership with UPS. Their website says “today, 1 in 10 new apartments in the US are being built with Latch.” They work with some big names in the real estate industry, like Tishman Speyer, Related, and Avalon Communities.

    PRODUCT DESCRIPTION: “Latch is a full building access system that allows you to leave your keys behind and unlock doors with a smartphone, or Doorcode. Additionally, you can easily share access with your friends, family, and services, like cleaning, by sending them Doorcodes via the Latch App. The Latch Lens also takes pictures of your guests to provide a history of who entered your space and when.”

    • “Unlock with the App, your Apple Watch, a Keycard, or a door code.”

    • Smart lock, helps with UPS package deliveries, enabling dog walkers and cleaners to come in.

  • PRODUCTS: ButterflyMX

    FUNCTION: Several smart video intercom products.

    LOCATION: Headquartered in New York City

    FOUNDING YEAR: 2014

    SCALE: 5,000+ properties worldwide, including multifamily, commercial, student housing, and gated communities. They serve big names in the real estate industry like Jamestown Properties and The Chelsea Apartments in NYC; Avalon Communities in SF.

    PRODUCT DESCRIPTION: “ButterflyMX transforms any smartphone into a mobile video intercom system. Once the intercom has been installed in the building and the app has been downloaded, visitor calls from the intercom will come through the app as a video call wherever you are, so you can view the visitor before granting access to the building.” “ButterflyMX’s system also provides for virtual keys, messaging options, and digital timestamps. These systems cost between $5,000 and about $7,000 to install, depending on specifications, building size, and other variables.”

    COVID-19 MARKETING: They released a report based on new renter trends triggered by the pandemic - according to them, we have shifted from wanting convenience-based amenities to safety-based features, especially in multi-family housing.

    • Excerpt: “A year for the books, 2020 has dramatically reshaped the real estate landscape — especially multifamily housing. COVID-19 introduced social distancing, new security concerns, and a push for contactless solutions. As a result, renters’ priorities have shifted. Before the global events of 2020, highly amenitized living focused primarily on convenience. Now, safety-focused features are the key to high rental rates and lower turnover.”

    • They also advertise virtual keys and self-guided tours as a solution to apartment tours during COVID-19.

  • PRODUCTS: KeyCom and MVI MyKey digital doormen systems

    FUNCTION: Facial recognition and AI software to monitor building access

    LOCATION: Headquartered in Brooklyn

    FOUNDING YEAR: 2016

    FOUNDER: Samuel Taub

    SCALE: 16,000 live users (don't know if that is # of tenants or properties). As of 2018, they began piloting in the tri-state area and are now planning on a global scale. They serve some of the Worst Evictors in NYC, like Parkoff, Pinnacle, and E&M. They have been awarded "Best Smart Video Door System" in the US.

    PRODUCT DESCRIPTION: “With state-of-the-art facial recognition and artificial intelligence software, the KeyCom® offers enhanced security and convenience for your building.” KeyCom allows for touch-free keyless Bluetooth entry, digital keys. Allows building managers to track entries.

    • “My Video Intercom (MVI) has partnered with Brivo, which provides cloud-based smart building software, to launch a unified property management solution with biometric facial recognition.”

    • “MVI allows residents to connect with the platform through a smartphone app has multiple functions that include: automatic keyless entry, delivery tracking, remote interaction with guests and visitors, send timed and controlled guest keys, and more.”

    COVID-19 MARKETING: Their Instagram during COVID has emphasized safety, package security, and touch-free access.

    • June 2020 Instagram post: "Did you know that 63% of millennials would move out of an apartment due to a lack of security? We have upgraded our property management system to integrate with @brivo security solutions— allowing for an unparalleled level of autonomous security at all entry and exit points.

    • July 2020 Instagram post: “From pizza to packages, our technology will allow you to manage all incoming deliveries safely and easily!“

    • December 2020 Instagram post: “In a world where touch-free access is more crucial than ever, our patented KeyCom® is designed to keep you safe.”

  • PRODUCTS: Reliant Safety/Omni New York LLCSpy

    FUNCTION: Camera and security systems in low-income, affordable, and public housing.

    LOCATION: Both Reliant Safety and Omni NYC LLC are headquartered in NYC. Reliant Safety is an Omni organization.

    FOUNDING YEAR: 2009

    FOUNDERS: Mo Vaughn, Robert Bennett and Eugene Schneur

    SCALE: Omni—The Omni portfolio has more than 9,000 security cameras in operation which support approximately 13,000 residential units. These cameras record footage 24 hours a day through Security Operations Centers (SOC). Reliant Safety— Manages and secures over 20,000 residential units nationwide.

    PRODUCT DESCRIPTION: “Reliant Safety SOC's are manned by professionals capable of handling security incidents from detecting incidents, tracking individuals as they move around a complex, remotely coordinating operations with police and emergency services, and providing usable evidence for prosecution when needed.”

    • Reliant Safety’s Mobile Response Team consists of former law enforcement officers and military personnel. This allows them to also efficiently serve as the property management liaisons with law enforcement, by providing intelligence from informants and from the anonymous Tenant Tips Hotline, as well as video evidence of crimes.

    • Reliant Safety helps eliminate illegal subletting with a two-pronged approach. We directly collect intelligence from tenants or site staff. We then verify the identity and entrance credentials of tenants using camera and access control systems, including biometrics. Biometric detection is a form of frictionless access control that combines facial recognition and body movement analysis. It provides 99.7% accurate, in-motion identification using multiple biometric characteristics as residents walk through an entry point.”

Rezoning Maps

FACIAL RECOGNITION DEPLOYMENT IN AFFORDABLE HOUSING COMPLEXES

Public and low-income housing in gentrifying neighborhoods as testing grounds for facial recognition

Map of Housing Complexes

How to Research Landlord Tech

Step 1: Identify Social Media Presence

If you want to research a specific landlord tech company, the first step is to go to their website and see if they have any social media accounts. Sometimes, these can be found in the footer of the website, or you might want to look up “Instagram + ‘Company Name’” on a search engine and see what comes up. If the company has an Instagram account, read a few posts and see if there is any information about specific locations (cities, neighborhoods, buildings) that could locate where their technology is being deployed.

Step 3: Export and Clean Data

Upload the data you scraped into Google Sheets, Airtable, Excel, LibreOffice, or other spreadsheet software of your choice. Read through your data and clean up the spreadsheet to only keep information that you are interested in. This is a sample spreadsheet with data scraped from the Instagram account of virtual doorman company Carson (@carson.live). Each row represents a different Instagram post from Carson. Each column contains a different set of information scraped from the post (ex: description, location, photo, hashtags, etc).

Step 4: Additional Data Sources

Once you have a clean spreadsheet with scraped social media data, you may want to add more information based on how you’d like to use it. For example: If you want to visualize your data by mapping it, you will need to “geocode” it. That means, for any post with a specific location (ex: New York City, NY or “45 Landlord Avenue, Brooklyn NY”), you will need a “latitude” and a “longitude” to place it on a map. You can geocode points individually by inputting addresses into LatLong.Net, or using a batch geocoder like Batch Geocoder for Journalists. In your spreadsheet, you would need to add a column for latitude, and a column for longitude. If you want to research the landlord of a specific building where tech has been deployed, you could add a column in your spreadsheet for “ownership” and look it up. In New York City, JustFix NYC’s WhoOwnsWhat is a great tool to find out who owns a specific building. In San Francisco, the AntiEviction Mapping Project will be releasing a similar tool, EvictorBook, to help tenants research their landlords.

Step 2: Scrape Data

Once you have identified one or more companies whose social media accounts could be fruitful as a data source, you are going to need to “scrape” the data — in other words, find a way to bulk download the information they have posted on their social media page. Alternatively, you could do it manually and write down the information contained in each post into a spreadsheet — but that takes a long time. There are many ways to scrape data. One platform is Octoparse,191 a web scraping tool that comes with a handful of free templates. Templates are great if you do not have software engineering experience — they allow you to scrape data without writing your own code. One shortcoming of Octoparse however, is that the free version only lets you scrape up to 8,000 hours (roughly 300 days) of social media posts —so you won’t be able to scrape the entire company’s social media account. Alternatively, if you have some coding experience, you could look for a code repository that guides you through the steps involved in data scraping. For example, the following GitHub repository guides you through using a data scraper built with Python: https://github.com/arc298/instagram-scraper

Step 5: Ground Truthing

Digital data and maps often include blindpots, misrepresentations, and inaccuracies. They also tend to obscure on-the-ground observations and present a top-down view, gazing down on our cities. If you are able to, it could be fruitful to “ground-truth” the data you have found through web scraping. Find a data point near you, in your neighborhood for example, and go check out the building. Do you see a new video intercom installed in the entrance way, or any other signs of landlord tech? If you feel comfortable, take a picture to show what you find, and contribute it to our growing body of crowdsourced data on Landlord Tech Watch.

Sample Foil