My Building Has Replaced Our Keys With an App. Is That Legal? - The New York Times

Real Estate|My Building Has Replaced Our Keys With an App. Is That Legal?

Q: I moved retired of New York City to an flat successful New Rochelle. Instead of keys, tenants usage a smartphone app to unfastened doors to the gathering lobby and idiosyncratic apartments. The app often fails erstwhile I usage it, but I don’t person a cardinal arsenic a backup. This argumentation wasn’t disclosed erstwhile I signed the lease, which does not notation the deficiency of keys. Can a gathering garbage to springiness residents keys? What astir older radical without smartphones? Or radical with imaginativeness issues?

A: So agelong arsenic you tin exit your flat and the gathering successful an exigency without needing to usage the app, the landlord is escaped to usage the integer exertion arsenic an alterative to a key. It’s akin to landlords who supply cardinal FOBs oregon cards successful lieu of metallic keys, said Alan J. Goldberg, a Manhattan lawyer who represents tenants.

And since smartphones are ubiquitous, it is not unreasonable that your landlord would take a exertion that requires you to person one. “Almost everybody has a smartphone nowadays,” Mr. Goldberg said. “I don’t deliberation the courts would beryllium sympathetic to that” if you challenged the policy.

As you mention, however, the app mightiness not beryllium accessible to tenants with disabilities, similar imaginativeness oregon representation impairment, oregon mobility limitations. A tenant with a disablement should notify the landlord of their request for a tenable accommodation, requesting an alternate to the app, similar a accepted key. If the landlord does not comply with the request, the tenant tin file a ailment with the New York State Division of Human Rights.

For everyone else, the app volition person to do. But it needs to work, and you mentioned that yours is unreliable. If the strategy fails, the landlord has to hole it and supply you with an alternate method of entering the gathering and your apartment. Put your complaints astir the problems successful writing. If the landlord fails to code them immediately, record a ailment with the New Rochelle bureau of buildings.

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