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New App Will Hold Bad Landlords Accountable For Frigid Apartments
By
Lauren Evans
Published Aug 26, 2014
Modified Aug 26, 2014
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Heat Seek NYC
By
Lauren Evans
Published Aug 26, 2014
Modified Aug 26, 2014
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As you sit in your air-conditioned office, the August sun beating down on the pavement outside, it's only natural for your thoughts to turn toward winter: Soon, you'll be freezing. Soon, it will be time to file your annual 311 complaint about your landlord, who last year refused to turn on your heat until the frost has already taken three of your nine fingers. (The tenth was severed during that one night at the Beach Comber, so no one to blame but yourself there.)
It was only a matter of time before someone decided to battle this age-old lamentation with sleek technology, and now it's here. The device, and accompanying app, is called Heat Seek NYC, and it aims to prevent vulnerable New Yorkers from suffering in their own homes.
Every winter, there are more than 200,000 complaints about apartments left unheated, but the process for reporting the issue is tedious and unreliable. Heat Seek is essentially a web-enabled thermometer, which takes reading each hour and sends its findings back to a server. While the data itself will not do much to keep anyone warm, it will make it easier for elected officials and advocates to force bad landlords to follow the law. It has a Kickstarter!
The company is looking to raise $50,000 in order to provide 1,000 such sensors to tenants who need them most.
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