Lawyer To NYCHA: Refund Rent To Freezing Tenants, Or Face Lawsuit

NEW YORK, NY — The Legal Aid Society has threatened to sue the New York City Housing Authority if it doesn't refund rent for tenants who spent days in freezing-cold apartments. In a letter to NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye on Friday, a Legal Aid lawyer argued the housing authority owes residents compensation for shirking its duty as a landlord to provide heat and hot water as temperatures hit record lows this winter.

The demand came three days after NYCHA officials admitted to the City Council that more than 80 percent of its residents — 323,000 people — had lost heat, hot water or both between October and Jan. 22. The average outage lasted at least two days, officials said.

City and state laws obligate NYCHA to provide heat and hot water as a landlord. The authority should refund tenants left in the cold for each day they lost the utilities from Dec. 27 to Jan. 16, when temperatures were coldest — or else the Legal Aid Society will sue, wrote Lucy Newman, a staff attorney in the group's Civil Law Reform Unit.

"It’s really quite simple: The City is required by law to provide these utilities. When that obligation is broken, there are consequences," Newman said in a statement.

The letter asks NYCHA to contact Legal Aid by Feb. 21 if it wants to resolve the dispute without a lawsuit.

City law requires all landlords to keep apartments heated to at least 68 degrees when the temperature falls below 55 degress before 10 p.m., and to at least 55 degrees from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. if the outside temperature is below 50 degrees. Landlords also have to provide hot water 24 hours a day under state law.

The housing authority has scrambled in recent weeks to repair its aging boilers, for which it has blamed this winter's systemic heating failures as the city saw the most consecutive days with freezing or sub-freezing temperatures since the 1960s. Several entire NYCHA complexes housing thousands of people have lost heat or hot water repeatedly, forcing tenants to sleep under heavy blankets or turn on their ovens for warmth.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has pledged $200 million for heating upgrades at 20 NYCHA developments over the next four years, including several new boilers.

A NYCHA spokeswoman said the authority is using its limited funds to get its heating systems back up to snuff — but said nothing about refunding rent. The housing authority did give tenants a rent break after Superstorm Sandy ravaged several buildings in 2012, the Legal Aid Society said.

"We understand how hard this winter has been on many of our residents," NYCHA spokeswoman Jasmine Blake said in a statement. "Our focus is on fixing the underlying problems and upgrading our heating equipment as fast as possible to prevent future outages—and that’s where we’re devoting every resource we have."

A lawsuit over heating failures would bring NYCHA's other recent scandal into the courts. Several tenants joined a class-action lawsuit against NYCHA last year over its failure to conduct legally mandated inspections for lead paint. Some tenants blame lead poisoning for their children's lingering health problems, court papers say.

(Lead image: NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye testifies at a City Council committee hearing on Feb. 6. Photo by William Alatriste/New York City Council)