Ryan Deachman’s living room ceiling holds a little white square box set flush and virtually the same colour as the paint. It could pass for a smoke detector or leftover hardware. It’s the kind of fixture you stop noticing after a while.
But almost nothing in his apartment escapes it. The device tracks temperature and humidity. It senses motion. It measures noise. It is the quietest object in the room, and the one paying the closest attention.
The box, called a Minut Monitor from the private Swedish company Mînut Inc., is one of about 300 such devices installed in apartments owned by the Concord Housing and Redevelopment Authority, a federally funded agency that provides affordable housing in the city of Concord.
For Deachman, 34, who has lived in the Crutchfield building on Pitman Street for seven years, the monitor has changed how he feels about the place he calls home.
“It almost comes across to me like these systems are in place just to threaten us and make us feel like we are lesser beings,” said Deachman. “It makes you feel like you’re in prison almost. It’s like having a probation officer on your ceiling.”
Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire and New Hampshire Legal Assistance sued the Concord Housing Authority in Merrimack County Superior Court. The lawsuit states that the housing provider invaded residents’ privacy and violated their constitutional rights by installing these devices that track tenants’ activity in their homes.
In a November 2024 letter to tenants, Concord Housing Authority said the devices would detect smoking, excessive noise and temperature levels inside units. The letter stated that the devices have no cameras and do not record or listen to sound, and the lease addendum says the same.
Concord Housing Authority receives federal funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which requires public housing agencies to enforce a smoke-free policy in low-income housing.
Motion sensing
For tenants and those who filed the lawsuit, the concern isn’t that the devices detect smoke or temperature inside units. The problem is that they can also track motion.
In a statement to the Monitor, the Concord Housing Authority said the installed devices “do not record sound, voice, or motion.” They register only whether noise exceeds a specific decibel threshold continuously for 10 minutes, and that it does not use the devices’ crowd-monitoring capabilities, the agency said.
But the court documents paint a different picture. An agreement between Mînut Inc. and Concord Housing Authority shows the agency signed up for Mînut’s “Pro Plan,” and the agreement’s scope of services lists all of the devices’ monitoring features.
According to Minut’s website, those features include occupancy monitoring, which uses signals from nearby devices to detect how many people are in a room, and the devices also contain a motion sensor.
Deachman said he felt blindsided. He did not know the devices monitored motion until he researched them and found the details on Minut’s website. He also said he felt he had no real choice when the housing authority presented the lease addendum about the devices.
“The way they went about that was not necessarily ethical. They sent us a paper. Didn’t tell us the details of the machines,” he said. “It felt like if you don’t sign this, then you’re violating your lease agreement.”
Records obtained by the ACLU and New Hampshire Legal Assistance show that passive infrared motion sensors have been logging activity in each unit. The data shows timestamps clustered closely together whenever the sensor detects motion and gaps in between where no motion was recorded
Chris Schott, the fair housing project director at New Hampshire Legal Assistance, said the frequency of those timestamps can be compared against noise levels to reveal patterns in a resident’s daily routine.
“This is something where they’re putting into your apartment where you live, your sanctum and they are detecting when things are occurring in there,” he said. “You don’t really have any sort of privacy because they have 24/7 eyes on you, essentially collecting that data by the minute.”
No way out
The Concord Housing Authority has installed 329 Minut devices across its properties at a cost of more than $44,000. Residents say the devices have remained in place and operational since the lawsuit was filed, and that the housing authority has not communicated with them about the devices or any changes to their use.
The lease agreement also states that tenants could face eviction for repeat noise or smoke violations, and that they would be billed $300 if the devices are damaged.
Aislinn Kalob, the Ward 6 city councilor in Concord, said many residents in these buildings are low-income families, older adults or people with disabilities, and they are afraid about their living situations.
“I have really just heard from people wanting to know that leaders are listening, that they are paying attention, and that they meet the situation with an appropriate level of concern,” she said. “The hardest part for me to hear is that sense of paranoia, like a deep fear.”
The City of Concord is largely removed from the Concord Housing Authority’s operations, with the exception that the city manager appoints the authority’s five-member board of commissioners.
Kalob said she wants to see more transparency from the housing authority. The city’s website has no minutes of the board of commissioners meetings between July 2013 and October 2025, a gap of more than 12 years.
Many residents did not want to be named for fear of retaliation, especially the loss of their housing. Some said that instead of the housing authority spending thousands of dollars on these devices, they would rather see the money go toward maintaining the apartments and regularly cleaning the hallways.
Deachman lives on just over $10,800 a year, and all he wants is for his apartment to feel like home. He’d like to have friends over without feeling embarrassed by the grimy hallways or the device mounted above his head.
Deachman said he would have loved to be involved with the class action lawsuit. But it took him six years to get on a waiting list for this housing, and he can’t bring himself to gamble it away.
If the Concord Housing Authority were to retaliate and evict him for any reason, Deachman said he’d have nowhere to go.
Living with fibromyalgia and a traumatic brain injury, he knows exactly how much that stability is worth.
“You feel hopeless. You feel like you are reliant on this system that you’re in, and you can’t really get out of it,” Deachman said. “How do you expect us to feel like we belong in society when you’re keeping us in this type of situation?”
