Broken boilers: inadequate reporting obscures depth of problem
Oversight – Chronic Heat and Hot Water Failures in NYCHA Housing
Testimony to New York City Council
Chair Ampry-Samuel of the Committee on Public Housing
Chair Torres of the Committee on Oversight and Investigations
Elena Conte, Director of Policy
February 6, 2018
Chairs Ampry-Samuel and Torres, thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony and for holding this
important hearing on an urgent and devastating problem. Pratt Center for Community Development works
for a more just, equitable, and sustainable New York City by supporting low- and moderate-income
communities to plan for and realize their vision. In the service of this mission we have partnered with and
provided technical assistance to dozens of community-based organizations. We are currently working with
the Turning the Tide Collective, comprised of groups that organize and serve public housing residents in
Red Hook and Gowanus, Brooklyn, such as Red Hook Initiative, Families United for Racial and Economic
Equality (FUREE), and Fifth Avenue Committee. Turning the Tide works to increase climate change resiliency
specifically in these public housing communities.
As the climate change-influenced extreme weather of “Bomb Cyclone” Grayson was approaching, we
wanted to visualize the extent to which people in NYCHA developments were being impacted by heat and
hot water outages, and we set out to gather data to create a map.
What should have been a simple task we soon realized was impossible; instead our effort is a
testament to what is wrong about the reporting systems for problems in NYCHA developments and
with the information that the City makes available to the public about conditions within NYCHA. Of
course this is information that our community partners have been saying for years, but we want to take this
opportunity to support their lived experience and to further elaborate on the ways in which these systems
prevent NYCHA from gaining the full picture of what is wrong (and robs them of the opportunity to
respond), and prevents the public from understanding the extent of the problems. These realities hamper
our collective ability to arrive at the solutions that the 400,000 residents of public housing need, and
compromise our mission as a city to preserve affordable housing and ensure safe and healthy housing
conditions for all – especially the most vulnerable among us.

 To find out where there were outages, we first started cataloging news stories. 5 media outlets 1 generated
a list of more than 20 developments 2 with outages. We then went to reference NYCHA’s own data. They
have a page just for elevator, gas, heat, and hot water outages: Reported outages and estimated
completion dates are listed on this web page.
However, there are a number of limitations to this site that might interfere with the completeness of the
data we obtained.
-

Previous outage data is deleted when the page is updated and is then no longer publicly available

-

It is updated with unknown frequency, meaning that in theory it could have been updated more than
once between the times that we checked and downloaded data, causing us to miss information.

We downloaded NYCHA data three times: on January 5th, January 8th, and January 9th, generating a list
of 6 developments, none of which contained developments from the list of 20 in the news media. This
means that either NYCHA did not have that information in its data set, OR that its system of clearing tickets
and removing the complaints while failing to keep a publicly accessible comprehensive list obscures the full
picture from the public. Additionally, the way that 311 complaint data about NYCHA residences is
captured also has a high probability of causing records of reported outages to be “lost.”
Beyond these failures of data disclosure, we have other reasons to believe that the map we created (see
attachment) is incomplete. Community-based partners and residents also self-reported outages at
Gowanus Houses and in the Coney Island area, but since we were not able to get detailed information
about those issues, and we did not cast a wide request for self-reports, we opted not to map those.
However, we believe that the outages for heat and hot water during this period were more extensive
than shown on the map.
The public needs to have access to NYCHA data on Open Data NYC or on NYCHA’s website in order to:
o understand NYCHA properties’ conditions better;
o advocate more effectively; and
o oversee the budget for repair allocations.
The public data needs to be comprehensive and integrated
o Currently, NYCHA does not publicly disseminate most of data the agency collects:
 NYCHA’s data should be inclusive of all types of data collected and in all time spans
data is collected. NYCHA should adhere to New York City Open Data Law (local law
11 of 2012).

ABC Eyewitness News, NBC New York, Patch New York, BK Reader, NY Daily News
Harborview Terrace , west side; The Woodside Houses; Tilden Houses; Pink Houses; Sedgwick Houses; Patterson Houses;
Jefferson Houses; Lower East Side Rehab; Rutland Towers; Independence Houses; Redfern Houses; Forest Houses; West Brighton
II development; Red Hook West -one building-; Randall Avenue; Balcom Av Development; Sotomayor Houses; Rosebank Houses;
Reid Houses; Haward Houses
1

2

2

 The data needs to be explained
o When the agency publishes data (for example through “My NYCHA Developments”) it should
(but currently does not) come with comprehensive metadata; which is information about the
method of data collection (who collected it, when, how, etc.)
The data provided should be easy to manipulate
o The Open Data Law calls for data to be available in a format “that allows for automatic
processing” which means both that it should be in one place or linked and that it should be in
machine readable format (i.e. in spreadsheet/database formats like Excel sheets that can be
manipulated/analyzed and not PDFs)
Conclusion
In short, it’s clear that the extent to which there are heat and hot water outages in NYCHA residences is
massive and unacceptable, whether there is “extreme weather” or not. Climate change also alters our
notion of “extreme” weather, as we are forced to adapt to the “new normal.” The trauma of surviving
outages of this sort impact residents long after the specific incidents and the cumulative toll of ongoing
incidents causes stress levels to rise to dangerous levels. The point of today’s hearing is to raise up this
reality, and to attempt to comprehend the extent of and source of the issues so that as a city we can move
swiftly to address the need. And yet, the systems for even assessing that need are deeply broken. Pratt
Center calls on NYCHA and Mayor de Blasio to increase transparency around those systems and
others, to heed the calls of the most directly impacted people, and to fully invest in preserving our
largest single stock of affordable housing by making sure it is safe and healthy.
Thank you.
For additional information, please contact:
Elena Conte, Director of Policy, econte@prattcenter.net 718-399-4416
Sadra Shahab, GIS Specialist/Planner, sshahb@prattcenter.net 718-646-8647
Attachment: Heat and Hot Water Outages in NYCHA During Extreme Weather:
“Bomb Cyclone" Grayson and Aftermath Map
NOTE: This testimony was prepared by the Pratt Center for Community Development. It does not necessarily reflect
the official position of Pratt Institute.

3

 Heat and Hot Water
Outages in NYCHA During
Extreme Weather
"Bomb Cyclone" Grayson and Aftermath
BRONX

NYCHA properties with no heat or hot water (or both)

Sedgwick Houses

All other NYCHA properties

Forest Houses
Sotomayor Houses

231 W 151st

Randall-Balcom Houses

Samuel (City)

This map shows NYCHA properties with no heat
and hot water for which Pratt Center was able to
retrieve data. It does not necessarily include all
NYCHA properties with these outage issues.
For example, people with firsthand knowledge
of the conditions in Gowanus Houses and in
developments in Coney Island reported
outages personally to Pratt Center.

Stebbins Avenue-Hewitt Place
Patterson Houses
Jefferson Houses

Woodside Houses

MA

NH

AT
TA
N

Harborview Terrace

QUEENS
Independence Houses
Vernon Ave Houses
Bushwick II

Red Hook West

Howard Houses

Rutland Towers

Pink Houses

Reid Houses

West Brighton II

BROOKLYN

Van Dyke I
Tilden Houses
Glenwood Senior Center

Rosebank Houses
Redfern Houses

STATEN ISLAND

Data sources: NYCHA, 311 complaints, media scan of outage-related stories.
Data retrieved between 1/4/18 and 1/10/18