"There’s a lot of online tools to help people find apartments, but there’s nothing really there to help someone live in an apartment," says Philip J. DeVon, community membership manager for Chicago’s Metropolitan Tenants Organization, a group that worked with a design studio to develop its own app for tenants and landlords to resolve issues that arise in buildings.
Over 5,000 people have signed up for the app, called Squared Away Chicago, and hundreds of issues have been marked as "resolved" within the app, DeVon says, such as getting security deposits returned and repairs made. The group is talking with large management companies about having all building managers use the app.
SquaredAway is mainly meant to help landlords and tenants keep relations friendly. Another technology under development, Heat Seek NYC, is more intended for situations when there’s already conflict: The New York startup’s sensors measure building and apartment temperatures, helping tenants prove their landlord isn’t providing enough heat (New York City law requires landlords maintain overnight temperatures of at least 55 degrees.)
So far Heat Seek has done a small pilot partnering with community groups but installed sensors themselves in six buildings, says co-founder and executive director Noelle Francois. But the team has worked to make them simple to use, so tenants or organizers could operate them on their own. "We didn’t want tech literacy to be a prerequisite," she says—an apartment Wi-Fi connection isn’t even necessary. An expanded pilot, with 120 sensors in 40 buildings, is next, with groups like Community Action for Safe Apartments in the Bronx taking the lead.
For technology tools to be their most effective, however, city officials often also have to be on board. JustFix.NYC wants to work with the city to use it to schedule housing inspector visits, so tenants can be sure to be home. Los Angeles housing advocates, Strategic Actions For A Just Economy (SAFE) learned that it needed to work with the city the hard way: It developed Tenants In Action, a housing violation reporting app, before it had integrated with the city’s housing violation system.
"The complaints didn’t go straight to the housing department. They went straight to us, which didn’t really help. We just ended up with tons of complaints on our desk," says SAFE executive director Cynthia Strathmann.