Testimony of New York City Comptroller Brad Lander to the New York City Council Committee on Housing and Buildings: Oversight – Preparing for Heat Season

Oversight – Preparing for Heat Season

Thank you to the Committee on Housing and Buildings for this opportunity to testify on the New York City’s readiness for the 2023-2024 heat season.

Nearly two years ago, the Twin Parks fire in the Bronx tragically killed 17 people and exposed a set of failures in the City’s ability to enforce heat codes. Given the lack of adequate heat in the building, tenants resorted to using unsafe electric heaters.

In response to this tragedy and the need to improve the City’s code enforcement regime, my office published a report this past January titled “Turn Up the Heat: Strengthening Enforcement of NYC’s Heat Laws.”  The report analyzes nearly one million heat complaints from approximately 70,000 unique privately owned buildings between 2017-2021.

Our key findings include:

• Heat code complaints and violations are not distributed equally across the city. The population of the five community districts with the highest volume of 311 complaints related to a lack of heat are 93% people of color and the five community districts with the most heat related violations are 89% people of color.
• The City’s enforcement strategies – issuing violations, HPD-initiated litigation, using the Emergency Repair Program, and the new Heat Sensor Program – are generally effective. Across the board, these interventions led to reductions in heat complaints the following season. For example, issuance of violations to a building correlated to a 47% average drop in the number of heat complaints in the following heat season. However, the rationale used to deploy the strategies is unclear.
• In a small percentage of buildings, lack of heat is persistent and severe. There are 1,077 buildings in New York City in which tenants complained more than 5 times each heat season from 2017 to 2021, about 1.5% of all buildings with heat complaints. Just about 30%, or 244,176, of all complaints made city-wide during the 2017 – 2021 heat seasons were made by tenants living in these 1,077 buildings.
• While the City has many potential strategies to address heat complaints, they are often not deployed in many eligible cases. Of those 1,077 buildings in which tenants complained more than 5 times each heat season, over 25% of the buildings did not have any violations against them, indicating the City did not take any enforcement action related to a lack of heat.

Since the Twin Parks fire, the City has taken some steps to address heat code enforcement challenges. In May and June 2022, the Council passed laws to reduce the amount of time that a landlord has to respond to and increase the penalties for a violation related to self-closing doors. In addition, the laws created a self-closing door inspection program, banned the sale of certain types of electric heaters, and expanded fire education and language accessibility. More recently, the Council passed Local Law 70 to expand the heat code sensor program as well as Local Law 71 to increase civil penalties for certain violations. The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) is addressing its shortage of Inspectors, which faced acute attrition challenges especially throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the City must take additional measures to improve heat code enforcement.

The report includes a series of recommendations that have yet to be implemented in the following categories:

• Use data and technology to inform or prioritize inspections with a focus on buildings with persistent heat complaints. This includes providing Inspectors with comprehensive information about the history of heat complaints in each building, expanding on a database of buildings with persistent heat complaints to prioritize inspections, and offering more flexible inspection options for tenants.
• Conduct comprehensive site inspections and identify landlords’ willingness to comply. HPD and the Department of Buildings (DOB) should conduct joint inspections of central heating and distribution systems to better coordinate with the property owner on barriers to providing consistently adequate heat.
• Expand proactive code enforcement and targeted escalation. HPD should utilize the Emergency Repair Program (ERP) or 7A to make comprehensive repairs as needed and/or offer preservation purchases where buildings are acquired by not-for-profit developers, renovated as necessary. and operated as affordable housing.
• Expand tenants’ rights and education. The City should expand direct multilingual outreach to tenants and fund community organizations that educate and assist tenants. New York State should pass Good Cause eviction protections to prevent the fear of eviction from dissuading tenants to advocate for better conditions.

For more detailed findings and recommendations, please see the report here. We look forward to working with elected officials, agencies, and advocacy groups to ensure the City is doing everything it can to prevent more tragedies and ensure all New Yorkers get access to adequate heat in their homes. Thank you.

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