Yet through the windows came north light, softened and diffused. The newlywed couple envisioned their future studios and moved in.
They put down bamboo floors, erected walls, built a kitchen and bathroom and raised two daughters in a home they have loved for over four decades.
Then a new set of digital locks that rely on a smartphone app arrived.
Now, the couple — Mary Beth McKenzie, 72, and Tony Mysak, 93 — find themselves waging a legal battle over access to their home that has raised an analog question: Do renters have the right to an old-school metal key?
A lawsuit filed in October in Housing Court in Manhattan by the couple and three other tenants of the building demands that the landlord give them access to all the entryways without having to use a smartphone app.
But it also has opened a wider debate over privacy, ageism and renter’s rights that has inspired new legislation in Albany.
At the heart of the dispute is a keyless entry system designed by the company Latch that has been installed in more than 1,000 buildings across the city.
Founded in 2013, the New York-based company saw a need for tenants and landlords to share access with guests, such as visiting family members, the electrician or a delivery person.
Users download the app, create a profile and can unlock doors via their phone or a key card or by punching in a code on the device’s numeric keypad. In some cases, the mechanism is compatible with an ordinary metal key.
Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal, a Democrat who represents the Upper West Side and parts of the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood (where McKenzie and Mysak live), introduced legislation Wednesday that would require landlords to provide a “traditional” method of entry in all areas for tenants who prefer not to use a smart access system. It also puts strict limitations on any personal data collected by Latch or any similar digital-access company.
“This is probably the wave of the future,” Rosenthal said. “And so we have to make sure as we gallop toward that brave new world that there are privacy protections and alternatives to using apps. That people who are older or disabled or have other issues are not being inconvenienced.”
Michael P. Kozek, a lawyer for the Hell’s Kitchen loft tenants, said residents had been given mechanical keys to entrances where Latch is not installed, including their individual apartment doors and side doors that access stairways. But if they want to enter the lobby that leads to the elevator and mailboxes, residents must use the keyless entry system.
“As a practical matter, this particular group of tenants happen to be elderly or close to elderly, and they’re not really technologically savvy,” Kozek said.
Charlotte Pfahl, a resident of the building and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said she was not comfortable providing personal information on an app that she believes will also track her movement. She said she thinks the landlord is using it as a tactic to push longtime tenants out to make way for higher rents.
“They are trying to get rid of the rest of us,” Pfahl, 67, said.
Latch is not a named party in the lawsuit, and the chief executive and co-founder of the company, Luke Schoenfelder, would not comment on the court challenge.
Schoenfelder said the company did not capture, store or use GPS location data of users, nor did it share personal data with third parties for marketing purposes. He said Latch was revising its privacy policy to remove any ambiguity.
Landlords can view only the history of entry into common areas, not residents’ apartment units, and they are not permitted to revoke access to the building without an order of eviction, according to Schoenfelder.
“It’s just like going out and changing the locks in the middle of the night — to my knowledge we’ve never had an instance where that was done,” Schoenfelder said.
Benjamin Dulchin, executive director of the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development, a coalition of affordable housing organizations in New York City, said this new frontier in digital access was worrisome.
“There’s a lot of reason for concern that high-tech apps actually take and track a lot of your personal information,” Dulchin said. “I don’t want my landlord to know when me or my kids are coming in or out.
“People have an absolute right to expect both security and privacy.”
Lisa Gallaudet, an attorney who represents the company that owns the building, said the keyless entry system was installed to increase security after a burglary last year. Gallaudet said the tenants, who have filed two other lawsuits, are attempting to obstruct the owner from converting the industrial property into legal residences under the state’s Loft Law.
“Consistent with their past conduct, these select few litigious tenants are wasting judicial resources that should be afforded to deserving claims,” Gallaudet said in a statement.
Many units at the building are being renovated or are unoccupied.
People who entered the brick building with ease on a recent weekday tended to be younger.
“I’m used to it,” said Luis Solares, 28, who works at a first-floor office in the building. “But not everybody is ready for the digital revolution.”
McKenzie, a painter, conceded she has not stayed current with technology. She spends much of her time at home, depicting models who pose in her studio as life-size images on massive canvases. Two of her self-portraits are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s permanent collection.
“I don’t do Twitter or any of that,” she said. “That’s for young people.”
But she does not like the notion that perhaps she was resistant to keeping up. She owns an iPhone, but her husband, whose photography business dwindled when the industry went digital, is blind in one eye and struggles to use any type of phone.
“We just want a normal key to get in and out like we used to,” McKenzie said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.