NYCHA Should Spend $48M Cut From Heat Bill On Boilers: Politician

BOERUM HILL — The New York City Housing Authority plans to spend millions of dollars in coming years to fix failing boilers that leave residents freezing. But the beleaguered housing authority is saving millions more on heating bills each year that it should also put toward boiler repairs, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said Monday.

Energy-efficiency projects, including conversions of oil heating systems to cheaper natural gas, cut NYCHA's utility costs by $48 million from 2013 to 2016, a Citizens Budget Commission report found last year.

That money should go into a "lock box" to fund fixes to struggling boilers and more natural gas conversions that could save even more money, Adams said.

"We will not tolerate residents in private co-ops and luxury housings and apartments to go through waht NYCHA residents are going through," Adams, a Democrat, told reporters outside NYCHA's Gowanus Houses in Boerum Hill, flanked by about two dozen tenants. "They are paying rent like every other tenant and they deserve the same protection."

Boiler breakdowns have left thousands of NYCHA tenants without heat as frigid temperatures bore down on the city. At least five buildings and one entire complex were without heat or hot water Monday afternoon as wind-chill temperatures dipped into the low 20s, according to NYCHA's website. Nineteen Brooklyn developments have reported heat problems to Adams' office, he said.

Two City Council committees will question NYCHA officials about the failures at a joint oversight hearing Tuesday. But Chairwoman Shola Olatoye may not be there because she has jury duty, the New York Daily News reported.

Using utility savings to fix boilers is just one of several "creative" methods Adams said city and state officials should use to help the housing authority. He called for NYCHA to create an online dashboard where residents can track repairs and for New York State to let the housing authority use contracting processes that would save money and get work done faster.

Margaret Brishbon, 81, lost heat last month in the second-floor Gowanus Houses apartment where she's lived since 1971, said one of her neighbors, Theresa Davis. It was on when reporters visited Brishbon's apartment Monday, but when it's out she is forced to sleep under several quilts wearing heavy clothes. She also had to spend two months without cooking gas before NYCHA put in a new gas line, she said.

"I had to wear clothes like I'm going outside to be in the apartment, and that's not good," said Brishbon, a Gowanus Houses tenant since 1963.

Tenants said it's hard to communicate with NYCHA about repairs to boilers and other construction projects the housing authority manages. Heating issues have persisted for years as the state and federal governments defunded the city's ailing complexes and NYCHA put off repairs to boilers it knew were struggling, they said.

"You don't wait until the 11th hour to fix things, take care of things," said Stephen Henry, who's lived at the Gowanus Houses since they opened in the 1940s.

The city should hold hearings at NYCHA complexes, not just in the comfortable confines of City Hall, to get a real sense of what tenants deal with, Adams said. The borough president said he wants to spend a night in a NYCHA apartment to get first-hand experience.

"These are not strangers," Adams said. "... These are our family members who have been the staple and the mainstay of this entire city."

This winter's widespread heat issues followed revelations in November that NYCHA failed to check apartments for lead as city and federal laws required, then falsely told federal officials the inspections had been done. Three senior officials have resigned in recent months and some, including Public Advocate Letitia James, have called for Olatoye to step down.

Adams said political figures should "stop pointing the finger of blame" at Olatoye, who inherited a mess when she took the helm in 2014. Tenants agreed that the problems predate her.

NYCHA's natural gas conversions do cut utility costs but don't "result in infusion of funds" that it could invest in heating repairs, housing authority spokeswoman Valeria Munt said. Those savings still help lower NYCHA's bills as it faces funding threats, she said.

NYCHA investigates every complaint of a heating outage and calls residents when the heat is out and when it's back on, Munt said. While there's no repair dashboard, the housing authority's MyNYCHA smartphone app lets tenants file repair requests, schedule repair appointments and get outage alerts, she said.

"We will continue working diligently to not only to upgrade our heating infrastructure but to continue to improve the way we communicate and engage with our residents," Munt said in an emailed statement, noting that NYCHA officials "greatly appreciate Borough President Adams’ interest" in how to fund heating fixes.

Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to spend $200 million on new boilers and heating fixes at 20 NYCHA complexes over the next four years. The city has also allocated $13 million to hire more boiler repair staff.

De Blasio has stood by Olatoye. At a news conference last week, the Democratic mayor said NYCHA residents are better off under her leadership than they were in the past.

"There are a couple of areas where things didn’t happen the way they should, no doubt. And some of that was people who below her did the wrong thing and they’re not there anymore," de Blasio said. "But I am convinced she is the person that can move us forward."

(Lead image: Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams speaks outside NYCHA's Gowanus Houses on Monday. Photo by Noah Manskar)