Heat Out For Thousands Of NYCHA Tenants As Mayor Touts Fixes

NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio admitted that some public-housing tenants might still be left in the cold this winter despite his administration's efforts to shore up their aging heating systems.

"I truly believe this will be a better winter. I don't think it'll be perfect," the mayor said Thursday at a news conference touting the New York City Housing Authority's myriad efforts to address heat failures before temperatures take a nosedive.

Those imperfections were clear for more than 4,700 tenants at six NYCHA complexes who suffered from heat and hot water outages on Thursday, the most frigid day of the fall so far.

More than 2,100 residents at Harlem's Rangel Houses and more than 1,700 at the Hammel Houses in Far Rockaway lacked both heat and hot water as of Thursday afternoon, according to NYCHA's own online outage dashboard. Service had been restored at Hammel at 3 p.m. after four hours and repairs were being made at Rangel, where one boiler was shut down due to a valve leak, a NYCHA spokesman said.

Heat was out for another 777 tenants as of 6 p.m. at the Whitman Houses and the Bedford-Stuyvesant Rehab in Brooklyn and The Bronx's Claremont Rehab and 1162-1176 Washington Ave. developments, the dashboard showed. Mobile boilers at Whitman will be operational in the first week of November, the NYCHA spokesman said.

"Today is not a promising start, and we hope that the City is equipped to avoid a reprise of last year’s nightmare," said Judith Goldiner, the attorney-in-charge of the Civil Law Reform Unit at the Legal Aid Society. The nonprofit has sued NYCHA demanding rent breaks for tenants impacted by last winter's heat failures.

The mid-October outages follow a bitterly cold winter in which more than 80 percent of NYCHA residents lost heat or hot water at some point, prompting outrage from tenants and officials.

NYCHA has taken several steps in the months since to keep the heat on for tenants and get it back up and running when breakdowns happen.

The housing authority has hired 50 new heating technicians and brought in five additional mobile boilers to roll out in emergencies, de Blasio said. It's also revamped its telephone alert system, which will now allow tenants to report continued problems in their apartments after repairs have been made, the mayor said.

Developments housing some 87,000 residents that had chronic issues last winter have also gotten "targeted" fixes, de Blasio said, including new permanent or mobile boilers at 20 developments.

Outside experts will also keep an eye on the heating systems at more than 40 sites to provide residents with "faster and better fixes," the mayor's office said.

"I understand why people are frustrated, I understand why they need to believe that real results are coming, and they have to see evidence of it," de Blasio said. "We think these investments will make an impact."

Last winter's breakdowns led NYCHA to recognize the need for "aggressive action" to address heating failures, said Stanley Brezenoff, the housing authority's interim chairman.

Vito Mustaciuolo, who took over as NYCHA's general manager earlier this year, has spearheaded a range of operational and capital improvements to address last year's issues, Brezenoff said — but the housing authority still hasn't been able to fix everything.

"There's no magic wand," Brezenoff said. "And as you're all aware, as we painfully are, the heating plant infrastructure is old and not completely reliable throughout NYCHA."

Like all other landlords, NYCHA is legally required to provide its roughly 400,000 tenants with heat and keep apartments at a certain temperature during the so-called heating season, which runs from Oct. 1 to May 31. Two tenants represented by Legal Aid sued the housing authority in April demanding rent breaks as compensation for NYCHA's violation of that law.

"(E)very time the City fails to provide these mandatory utilities, there needs to be some consequence," Goldiner said in a statement. "This is the reality in private dwellings, and it should be no different in public housing."

But de Blasio, a Democrat, said the housing authority is too cash-strapped to give residents any rent credits. NYCHA has nearly $32 billion in capital needs over the next five years and is also awaiting court approval of a settlement with federal prosecutors related to its failure to conduct legally mandated lead inspections.

"It's a chicken-and-egg problem," de Blasio said. "If we start taking away resources, it's only going make the situation worse," de Blasio said.

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio toured a heating plant at NYCHA's Lower East Side Rehab development on Thursday. Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)