Crown Heights NYCHA Sites See Utility Outage Spike, Data Shows

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — Crown Heights' public housing tenants went without heat, hot water and water more days in 2020 and 2021 than the year before, even as the total number of outages across the city's NYCHA complexes went down, according to new data.

New outage data revealed by the Legal Aid Society shows that the neighborhoods' seven public housing complexes suffered a total of 30 heat, hot water and water outages in the 2020-2021 heating season, which lasts from October to May.

That number is a jump from the year before, when 22 outages plagued the sites, according to the data.

The local spike comes despite the fact that New York City Housing Authority buildings across the five boroughs saw less overall utility outages in 2020-21 than the season before, though Legal Aid notes the 2,903 outages citywide were only a slight improvement from the 3,014 seen in 2019-20.

"While NYCHA has made some improvements to mitigate utility outages, residents still suffer lapses in service on a daily basis," Legal Aid Society's Lucy Newman said. "Our neighbors in public housing should not have to continue to suffer these conditions, especially in the dead of winter."

The Legal Aid Society obtained data for the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons from NYCHA through a Freedom of Information Law request. NYCHA is required by law to provide hot water and water at all times of day and to provide heat between Oct. 1 and May 31 when temperatures fall below a certain degrees, the organization notes.

In Crown Heights, the complex with the most outages last season was the Albany Houses, found between Albany and Troy avenues. The two sites on the complex had a total of 10 unplanned outages throughout the season, data shows.

The Kingsborough Houses, which has 16 buildings between Ralph and Rochester avenues, was not far behind with nine total unplanned outages during the 2020-21 season, according to the data.

And while any number of unplanned outages are a disturbance, Crown Heights' developments actually fared well compared to some other Brooklyn neighborhoods.

In Brownsville and East New York, for example, the Van Dyke Houses saw 34 outages in the 2020-21 season. The neighborhoods as a whole had more than 221 outages in the season across their two dozen NYCHA sites.

In Bed-Stuy, there were near 100 total outages both in 2019-20 and 2020-21, according to the data.

The Legal Aid Society said the continued utility problems prove more help is needed to make public housing repairs.

"This moment demands greater attention from Washington, Albany, and City Hall, and we call on President Biden, Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams to allocate significant funding to address NYCHA's capital needs, which is now tens of billions of dollars," Newman said.

For their part, NYCHA agreed that "deteriorating infrastructure" and a lack of investment is a "critical issue" contributing to the outages, but said they have improved over the years.

"NYCHA has demonstrated significant progress since 2019 in addressing service outages at its developments through improvements to heating and hot water operations and response, including increased staffing, roving teams, mobile boilers, planned preventative maintenance and a 24-hour heat desk," a spokesperson told Patch.