City Vows NYCHA Tenants Will Have a Warmer Winter After 'Troubling' Heat problems

"Mayor Bill Bill de Blasio announced a series of changes Thursday designed to ensure NYCHA tenants are warm during the cool season.

De Blasio said the public housing authority has hired 50 heating technicians, acquired five emergency mobile boilers and fine-tuned its customer service hotline system to guarantee complaints are only closed once heat is restored.

"We want to make sure that as many developments never have an outage, and if they have an outage, it's resolved right away," the mayor said.

The city's new strategies and investments come after more than half of public housing developments lost heat for more than a day last winter, according to city figures. The widespread lack of heat was among several conditions cited in the federal government's lawsuit and proposed settlement with NYCHA over hazardous conditions in its portfolio.

The mayor said there were several instances last winter where workers reported finishing repairs on a building's heating system, but service did not resume in several apartments, and NYCHA considered the work done. To prevent such service gaps, NYCHA's customer service system will now robocall tenants and verify their heat is working before closing any related work orders..."

Continue reading