More than 10,000 New York City Housing Authority tenants were without heat and hot water on Tuesday, marking the largest unplanned one day outage of the season.
All told, six public housing complexes were affected on Tuesday, the largest of them being the George Washington Houses, which is located on the Upper East Side and has 3,436 residents, and the LaGuardia Houses, a Lower East Side complex with 2,461 tenants, according to NYCHA’s latest outage report.
The Legal Aid Society, which tracks NYCHA outages, called on the agency to issue rent reductions for those affected.
“So far this heat season, thousands of NYCHA residents have been impacted by a heat or hot water outage – already very similar to what residents experienced the last two winters,” said Redmond Haskins, a spokesperson. “When the Housing Authority fails to provide tenants with working utilities, as per law, it must issue rent abatements to those impacted. This is the law for tenants in market rate apartments and it duly applies to those in public housing.”
Barbara Brancaccio, a NYCHA spokesperson, told Gothamist that the problems should be resolved by Tuesday afternoon and noted that the temperature outside was 50 degrees.
By around 4 p.m., Brancaccio said that service had been restored at three of the complexes, along with the Sotomayor Houses, which had a planned outage. “Crews are onsite at each development and are confirming temperatures,” she wrote in an email.
The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The latest outages come after more than 23,000 NYCHA tenants, including roughly 60 students at a pre-K, went without heat or hot water at some point throughout last week, in what was a worrying sign to public housing advocates.
NYCHA has struggled in recent years to provide heat for its roughly 400,000 low-income tenants, and reports of lack of heat have become routine for many.
Fight For NYCHA@FightForNYCHANearly 13,000 @NYCHA residents now without heat, water, or hot water.When are @NYCMayor @BilldeBlasio, @NYCSpeakerCoJo @CoreyinNYC, @Dromm25 going to put #NYCHA in the City Budget ? @BartGlobal @GuidepostGlobal
ImInTheGoo@SoOverThisCrapEvery year it’s the same issue. Bushwick hylan houses go thru it as well. My mom puts in multiple tickets but never has heat
In a physical needs assessment report released last year, NYCHA said that it needs $1.33 billion to repair its heating plants, which includes related components like boilers. The report noted that over 744 of the housing system’s boilers have a remaining useful life of five years or less.
Last month, Congressman Jerrold Nadler and U.S. Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, both Democrats, introduced legislation to provide $70 billion for public housing capital repairs, of which $32 billion would go toward the New York City Housing Authority.
(((Rep. Nadler)))@RepJerryNadler
This is unacceptable. @NYCHA is sitting on $100s of millions for boiler repairs but residents won’t see the difference for years. I’m fighting for a $70 billion emergency federal investment in public housing, but @NYCHA needs to turn the funding they do have into action. https://twitter.com/PIX11News/status/1194376382647865344 …PIX11 NewsNYCHA activating emergency heat response plan; 2,400+ units currently without heat or hot water http://via.pix11.com/JZibS
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