My latest for Wired:
To guard the safety and health of tenants, New York and many other cities require landlords to keep inside temperatures above a certain level from October until May. But not all building owners and managers follow the rules. Each year, heating complaints are either the number one or number two most frequent complaint to New York’s government services and information line, 3-1-1, says Tom Hunter, the spokesperson for a volunteer effort called Heat Seek NYC, citing data from the site NYC OpenData.
“Last year alone, 3-1-1 received 200,000 plus heating complaint calls,” he says. “Many more tenants go without heat and don’t call 3-1-1, so we don’t know exactly how many people are directly affected each year.”
Tenants can sue landlords over this, but historically, they’ve had to rely on their own hand written records of how cold their apartments get. And these records haven’t always held up in court. Heat Seek NYC hopes solve that problem by building internet-connected heat sensors to monitor the conditions of apartment buildings in order to provide a reliable, objective record that tenants and advocacy groups can use in court.
Full Story: Wired: How to Use the Internet of Things to Fight Slumlords
Previously: