NYCHA To Upgrade Heating Systems After Tenants Left In Cold

NEW YORK, NY — The New York City Housing Authority on Monday said it will take up $103 million worth of improvements to heating in public-housing complexes after thousands of tenants were left in the cold during the weekend's arctic freeze.

Six entire NYCHA developments housing more than 16,500 people still lacked heat, hot water or both on Monday afternoon after powerful winds and bitter cold struck New York City over the weekend, according to the authority's online outage dashboard. NYCHA's boilers — some of which are at least 50 years old — are vulnerable vulnerable to such rough weather, officials have said.

Tenants in more than 30 NYCHA developments reported heat problems to Stringer's office amid sub-zero wind chills over the weekend. The housing authority set up temporary warming centers for some residents as staff worked to get heat back on.

Some tenants without heat at the Parkside Houses in the Bronx have turned to their ovens and space heaters for warmth, measures that could lead to fires, said Lillithe Lozano, the president of the tenants association there. NYCHA's dashboard showed heat and hot water out at all of Parkside's buildings, though Lozano said just four were having problems.

“This has been the worst beginning of the year that we've had," said Lozano, who's lived at Parkside for 30 years and led the tenants association for 18 years. One boiler there goes out regularly during cold weather, she said, and many other nearby developments have struggled in the recent bitter cold.

A pair of NYCHA projects, slated to start in March, will upgrade decades-old heating controls systems to provide "more consistent and comfortable heat" in 41 developments containing more than 28,000 apartments, the housing authority said. The Whitman Houses in Brooklyn and the Patterson Houses in the Bronx will also get new boilers.

The work — paid for under federally funded energy performance contracts aimed at making buildings more environmentally friendly — will also upgrade lighting, ventilation and water systems to reduce the buildings' energy consumption by 15 percent. Constellation New Energy, a Maryland-based firm with New York City offices, will handle the projects.

"Energy Performance Contracts are an important financing tool that helps NYCHA address critical infrastructure needs, like replacing inefficient and aging boilers," NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye said in a statement. "EPCs will improve the quality of life for our residents and reduce energy costs."

The announcement came two days after City Comptroller Scott Stringer launched a new audit of the housing authority's heating systems.

Boilers in public housing fail at a much higher rate than others across the city, Stringer's office says. Some 39.5 percent of NYCHA boilers are defective in some way, five times the citywide average of 7.9 percent, according to the comptroller.

Stringer sent a letter to Olatoye on Friday requesting NYCHA's boiler inspection and repair records, among other documents, for his audit.

"We cannot be a city in which those with luxury towers are living in comfort, while those across the street in NYCHA complexes are deprived of heat and hot water," Stringer, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio and top NYCHA officials have blamed the heat problems on past neglect of the boilers and other infrastructure, which the housing authority lacks the money to replace.

Repairs to the boilers in the most danger of failing account for about $2 billion of the roughly $17 billion worth of building fixes NYCHA needs, the agency says. That total will increase to $25 billion when the housing authority releases its revised capital needs report later this month, Politico New York reported Monday.

Some $259 million — just 15 percent of the $1.7 billion NYCHA spent on building improvements from 2012 to 2016 — went to mechanical fixes, a category that includes repairs to boilers, elevators, gas lines and other infrastructure, according to a December report by the Citizens Budget Commission.

That's only about 22 percent of NYCHA's $1.2 billion in mechanical needs. The bulk of the housing authority's capital expenses in those five years, about $1.1 billion, funded repairs to roofs, ceilings and other run-down architectural features.

NYCHA says it will cooperate with Stringer's audit. The housing authority has some distressed boilers under 18- and 24-hour watch and also works during the summer to prevent breakdowns, officials said.

"While we appreciate the comptroller’s interest, the Mayor’s budget plan is based on a more in-depth, comprehensive review of boilers across the system," NYCHA press secretary Jasmine Blake said in a statement. "This extraordinary cold snap is testing all of our facilities, and our maintenance staff are responding aggressively around the clock to make sure tenants are safe."

Lozano praised NYCHA's response to the outages, but said the housing authority lacks the staff to get boilers back online quickly.

"We need funding for boilers. That’s really the issue," she said.

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio tours the Woodside Houses in Queens on Thursday during a heat outage caused by last week's snow storm. Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)