Article Media
SAN FRANCISCO — What people do in their homes is no one’s business but their own. But in multiple residential buildings across San Francisco, landlords have forced tenants to accept so-called “smart home” systems that monitor their comings and goings and other behavior. And they are using tenants’ personal information to track them, potentially even profiling their behavior with AI tools built specially for landlords.
Today, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and our legal partners Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, LLP and Tobener Ravenscroft LLP, sued landlord Equity Residential and surveillance technology vendor SmartRent in San Francisco Superior Court for violating tenants’ constitutional privacy rights in their homes.
"It’s against the law for landlords to force tenants to have surveillance devices in their homes,” said Jake Snow, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. “This is a flagrant abuse of people’s privacy.”
The complaint was filed on behalf of three current and former Equity Residential tenants as well as the San Francisco Tenants Union, a non-profit whose mission is to protect and advance the rights of San Francisco Tenants. The suit seeks a court ruling affirming that the California Constitution guarantees every resident a fundamental right to privacy in their home.
Equity Residential is one of the largest corporate landlords in the U.S. SmartRent provides and manages the surveillance technology. In addition to digital door locks, it features thermostat monitors, and sensors that purportedly detect leaks.
William Solis, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, had lived in his San Francisco apartment for almost six years when his landlord Equity Residential installed a "smart home" system with a digital lock in his apartment.
“Everywhere we go today, whether it’s online, at work, or in public spaces, we’re being tracked by a massive surveillance apparatus,” Solis said. “Your home is the one place where you shouldn’t have to worry about being watched.”
Landlords may say “smart home” devices are a tenant convenience. But the reality is, these AI-enabled systems can track patterns of tenant behavior, identify when people are home, and provide landlords with personal information that could be used to push out tenants perceived as too costly.
It’s not like people can easily move if they don’t want the AI devices.
“San Francisco has some of the highest housing costs in the country,” said Layla Stanley, Secretary of the Board of Directors at the San Francisco Tenants Union. “We are proud to join this lawsuit on behalf of tenants who have a right not to live in places where their landlords are monitoring them in pursuit of profits.”
The bottom line is that landlords can’t take away the privacy rights people have in their homes.
“The San Francisco Tenants Union and the other tenants filing this lawsuit are standing up for the simple truth that someone’s home is one of the most sacred and private spaces where people can be safe from the outside world,” said Joseph Tobener, partner at Tobener Ravenscroft, LLP. “When a landlord forces somebody to have a surveillance device in their home just to have a roof over their head, that's not convenience. It’s coercion. And it's unconstitutional in California.”
Melissa Gardner, a partner at Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, said: “People often feel powerless against their landlords. The laws these tenants invoke can check corporate abuse and level the playing field.”
### ### ###
