New apps for U.S. renters may keep lax landlords in line

(Reuters) - When Tom Hunter and his two roommates were left without heat for more than a month by a negligent landlord in New York, they began toying with an idea: an app that could help renters keep landlords in check.

Two winters and two months of coding later, the friends are ready to launch Heat Seek NYC in late October in collaboration with two not-for-profit groups.

The new Web app, which tracks ambient temperatures inside apartments with an Internet-connected sensor, is designed to be used by New Yorker renters, who filed some 214,000 complaints last year alone, according to the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The data recorded on the app produces a log that can be printed and taken to housing court.

"Our goal is to keep the heat on this winter," Hunter said.

Heat Seek NYC is among a growing number of tech-based tools for tenants and their advocates to force slack landlords to toe the line. Another is SquaredAway Chicago, a Web app designed to bolster tenant requests for repairs by recording them on a third-party server. The program is being replicated by local housing groups in Vermont, Boston and Washington, D.C. 

Also in the works is RentRocket, a website that uses crowd-sourced data to show the full cost of rental properties, including utility fees. It is expected to debut in at least 10 U.S. cities from Bloomington, Indiana, to Burlington, Vermont.

Finally, under development in Los Angeles is an app called Tenants in Action, which will report housing violations in English and Spanish directly to city agencies.

With renters constituting up to 35 percent of households nationwide in early 2013, according to a report by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, there should be no shortage of complaints in sight.

The new apps are part of a trend by not-for-profits toward making new technologies available to benefit a wider audience, said Annemarie Spitz of the Chicago-based firm Greater Good Studio, which uses design methods to solve civic issues.

In the end, the high-tech apps will do something as low-tech but essential as establishing a paper trail, albeit electronic, said John Bartlett, director of Metropolitan Tenants Organization, which worked with Spitz to build SquaredAway Chicago.

"One of the issues that we continually come up against with tenants is that everything is verbal, so there's no way to properly document what's happened," Bartlett said.

"Rental housing is a business transaction, and proper business etiquette is you put things in writing," he said.

Between October 2013 and May 2014, New York City completed about $5.1 million in emergency repairs when building owners failed to restore heat, hot water or both after being served with violation notices, according to the housing department.

Heat Seek NYC requires the installation of a temperature sensor inside an apartment. The tenant then uses a free app to compare the sensor data against outdoor temperatures and indoor requirements set by the New York City heating code to identify violations as they occur.

In New York, landlords are required to heat buildings to at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit when daytime temperatures fall below 55 degrees outside. At night, the inside temperature must be at least 55 degrees Fahrenheit" when it is 40 degrees or less outside.

Pricing plans for the sensor are still in the works, although the cost is expected to range from $30 to $80.

Heat Seek NYC plans to donate 100 sensors to low-income households this year and to give away another 1,000 after an online fundraising campaign.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Eric Walsh)

Original article source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/15/us-usa-tenants-tech-idUSKCN0I415W20141015

2 Investigators: In Cook County the Dead Get Tax Exemptions

(CBS) – Ghost voters are legendary in Chicago politics.

But now, the CBS 2 Investigators have learned thousands of ghosts have been getting more than $6 million in property tax exemptions in Cook County for decades.

The Cook County Assessor’s Office is cracking down on this type of tax  fraud. Under a $1.3 million contract with Lexis Nexis, Social Security lists of dead people were cross-matched with those getting senior exemptions and senior property tax freezes.

They got 4,000 hits.

The Chicago gravestones of John and Stanislawa Iwanyszyn show the couple died in 2005, but their names have been used to get senior exemptions and freezes at the Northwest Side home where they used to live — for a total savings of $24,151 in property taxes for the current property owner.

It’s just one of thousands of improper exemptions Assessor Joseph Berrios is removing from the records.

So far, they’ve caught 3,809 erroneous senior exemptions that collectively gave property owners $6.2 million in tax breaks they did not deserve.

It’s a cliché that dead people used to vote in Cook County, but Berrios says dead people getting tax exemptions will be stopped immediately.

“All these individuals that are doing this should be put on notice: We will find you, and when we do find you we’re going to put liens on you property if you don’t pay the money that you owe us,” Berrios says.

Property owners over 65 must apply every year for a senior exemption and cannot qualify for a senior freeze if their household income is over $55,000.

They have to sign the forms “and be on record that you’re still alive,” the assessor says.

Armed with a new law he proposed to the legislature, Berrios can go back four years to collect undeserved tax breaks plus interest and penalties.

That is what happened to Margaret Kloniecka, the owner of a home in the 1500 block of North Wood St. in Wicker Park.

She got $34,597 in tax breaks over the last four years. With interest and penalties, she recently paid back $61,003.

Kloniecka inherited the property from her cousin, who died in 2001. She says any underpayments were due to a “mistake” by a lawyer.

Combined with purging the property tax rolls of improper homeowner exemptions, Berrios predicts the total savings for the past year will be $12 million to $14 million.

The question is whether assessors in other counties will push for the same kind of program

Original article source: 

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/11/07/2-investigators-in-cook-county-the-dead-get-tax-exemptions/

Illinois Cook County Uncovers $9.4 Million in Fraud Revenue with Analytics

Cook County, Ill., has discovered approximately $9.4 million in new revenue thanks to a new state law and an analytics-based fraud detection solution.

Illinois lawmakers passed SB 41 last year, enabling counties to pursue individuals who took erroneous and fraudulent property tax exemptions. Previously the maximum penalty for those getting caught taking illegal exemptions was $40. Now counties that opt-in to the law can go after the full amount of tax owed.

Once SB 41 went into effect, Cook County partnered with LexisNexis Risk Solutions to streamline the review of property tax records. The company’s Homestead Exemption Fraud Detection Solution takes the county’s property tax database, analyzes it using analytics and public records, and delivers a report to the Cook County Assessor’s office that flags individuals who may be erroneously claiming exemptions.

County staff research those individuals, and if they appear to have filed fraudulent claims, issue a bill for the proper amount of property tax owed.

The new billing process started in March, and since then, Cook County has recovered $5.1 million. An additional $4.3 million is still outstanding, with most of the individuals who owe going through the county’s hearing process on the issue, according to Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios. If taxpayers don’t pay what they owe within 30 days, the county places a lien on their home for the owed amount.

In an interview with Government Technology, Berrios said SB 41 enables his office to go back three years in the records to bill for property taxes owed if an individual is found to have filed one or two fraudulent homestead exemptions. If more than two erroneous exemptions were claimed, the county is permitted to bill up to six years in arrears.

Homestead exemption laws protect the value of a person’s home against creditors and property taxes in certain situations by exempting a certain amount of a home’s assessed value, requiring the owner to pay less in taxes. The law varies depending on the state, but in general, it applies only to a person’s primary residence, not multiple properties — and that’s where fraud becomes an issue.

Berrios admitted that he was surprised at the number of fraudulent exemptions taken by people in Cook County. But he doesn’t believe the problem is over just because the county now has a system in place to catch people and recoup the money.

“There’s a tendency for some of these people to continue to cheat,” Berrios said. “So it’s an ongoing process.”

Tightening up property tax fraud laws and cracking down on violators is a growing trend in state and local governments. Two years ago, Delaware County, Ind., deployed a similar system that uncovered $1.5 million in lost revenue. In addition, Florida tweaked state law to enable assessors to go back as far as 10 years to evaluate whether homestead exemptions were abused by property owners, according to Berrios.

LexisNexis isn’t the only player in the fraud detection technology game. In 2012, Thomson Reuters’ Government Revenue Management Insight tool helped Miami-Dade County, Fla., discover more than $5 million in back taxes owed by county residents.

Looking ahead to 2015, Berrios said he wants to go back to the Illinois Legislature to increase county jurisdictional authority under SB 41.

The assessor explained that if his office notifies a taxpayer of an erroneous exemption that is at the tail end of the three- or six-year timeline cutoff, there can be a problem collecting if a taxpayer’s hearing and appeal process goes into the next calendar year. So Berrios wants to add language that reserves the county’s ability to collect what fraudsters owe, even if it is from a calendar year outside the current scope of the law.

“After working the bill as we had in the last year, we see that it’s more time consuming than I thought it would be,” Berrios said. “Because when you go through these investigations, there’s a lot to be done to verify.”

Brian Heaton  |  Senior Writer

Brian Heaton is a senior writer for Government Technology. He primarily covers technology legislation and IT policy issues. Brian started his journalism career in 1998, covering sports and fitness for two trade publications based in Long Island, N.Y. He's also a member of the Professional Bowlers Association, and competes in regional tournaments throughout Northern California and Nevada.

Original article source: 

http://www.govtech.com/budget-finance/Illinois-County-Uncovers-9-Million-in-Fraud-Revenue-with-Analytics.html