Public Housing Put Sensors in 300 Apartments. Tenants Sued.
Concord, New Hampshire's housing authority installed Minut sensors in about 300 public-housing units to flag smoke and noise. The devices also log motion.
TL;DR
- —Noise complaints go through neighbors and staff.
- —Starting in fall 2024, the Concord Housing and Redevelopment Authority put Minut sensors — a Swedish product sold to Airbnb hosts — into about 300 apartments.
- —Notices in the buildings said the devices were camera-free and did not record sound or listen to what people said.
Public housing already comes with rules. Smoking is banned. Noise complaints go through neighbors and staff. Concord, New Hampshire added hardware. What was installed Starting in fall 2024, the Concord Housing and Redevelopment Authority put Minut sensors — a Swedish product sold to Airbnb hosts — into about 300 apartments. NHPR reported the purchase at $46,060. New York Times reporting put the hardware at about $50 each plus $7.50 a month to monitor. Notices in the buildings said the devices were camera-free and did not record sound or listen to what people said. Kashmir Hill reported that tenants who looked the product up found a longer list: decibel levels, air quality, Bluetooth signals from phones as a proxy for how many people were in a unit, and motion detection. The ACLU's case page for LaValley v. Concord Housing and Redevelopment Authority says the devices can collect noise levels, motion, smoke and humidity, and iOS signal scans, on a minute-by-minute basis, stored indefinitely and available to housing-authority employees on demand. The Concord Monitor reported that one Minut device captured 64,944 motion events in a tenant's unit from November 15, 2025 through June 9. The ACLU says the authority amassed hundreds of millions of data points across the properties. Named buildings in the Monitor's coverage include Crutchfield, Parmenter Place, Kennedy, Boucher, Jennings, Ceriello, Pitman Place, and Thompson Square. The lawsuit On September 2, 2026, the ACLU, ACLU of New Hampshire, and New Hampshire Legal Assistance filed a class action in Merrimack County Superior Court. Because the housing authority is a government actor, the complaint calls the installation a continuous warrantless search of people's homes. Maria Savarese, a staff attorney at ACLU-NH, said in the organization's statement: "The government shouldn't get to know if you are getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom or when your morning alarm goes off just because you live in public housing." Nate Wessler of the ACLU told New England Public Media the devices run 24 hours a day, minute by minute, with the agency claiming "total discretion" over how long to keep the data. Concord Housing has said the sensors exist to flag indoor smoking and pinpoint noise complaints. A housing-authority statement quoted by the Concord Monitor said the ACLU was "fully aware that no voice, continuous audio, or invasive personal data has ever been collected or stored by CHA." Minut is not a defendant. The company has said the intended use is smoke and noise. Tenants say they were told the devices were for smoke and noise only, could not opt out, and were denied when they asked for their own data. Why the distinction matters A smoke alarm that only trips on smoke is one thing. A sensor that builds a timeline of when a unit is occupied, how many phones are present, and when people move around the apartment is a different object, even if it never stores a voice clip. Public housing is still a home. The New Hampshire Constitution's privacy language is the legal hook the complaint uses. The factual hook is simpler: if a landlord that is also the government can buy an Airbnb party sensor and keep the feed, the people with the least bargaining power get the most monitoring.