During two weeks of brutal cold, city received over 21,000 heat and hot water complaints
Photo courtesy of Roman Kruglov’s Flickr
During a two week period of super cold weather, including a considerable snowstorm, New York City received nearly 22,000 heat and hot water complaints from renters. According to the Daily News, many of those calls came from residents living in New York City Housing Apartments. On Sunday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said a lack of federal funding and upkeep is to blame for the defective boilers found at NYCHA apartments. “A lot of the buildings are 50 years old, 60 years old, 70 years old — they have not gotten the kind of upkeep they needed for decades,” the mayor told John Catsimatidis on his radio show.
In response to the thousands of heat and hot water outages, especially at NYCHA developments, City Comptroller Scott Stringer announced on Saturday that his office will launch a new audit of the authority’s heating systems.
“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 said in a press release. “Unfortunately, heating breakdowns happen year after year – and the bureaucracy continues to play whack-a-mole with short-term fixes instead of permanent solutions.”
According to the comptroller’s office, the complaints have come from tenants at over 30 NYCHA developments citywide in the last several days. In their initial review of the Building’s Department’s annual compliance filings for the high and lower pressure boilers since last July, the office found nearly 40 percent of NYCHA inspections reported defects compared to just under 8 percent citywide.
Residents of privately owned buildings were also without heat and hot water. As the Daily News reported, 15 of 34 residents at 1362 Gipson Street in Far Rockaway had to move to a hotel following a fire blew out a fuse on Dec 30. “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy,” resident Catherine Barnes told the Daily News about her apartment’s lack of heat. “I really wouldn’t.”
[Via NY Daily News]
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