Elected officials tour Woodside Houses as tenants face heat, hot water outages
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(From left to right) State Senator Jessica Ramos, City Councilmember Julie Won and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a tour of Woodside Houses, which has been without permanent boilers since September, on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2022. Photo courtesy of Won/Twitter
By Jacob Kaye
Every resident in NYCHA’s Woodside Houses had heat and hot water in their apartments when three elected officials – one from the city, one from the state and one from Congress – toured the housing complex’s temporary boiler system two days before a coming winter storm last week.
But that hasn’t always been the case this winter.
City Councilmember Julie Won, State Senator Jessica Ramos and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took a look Thursday at the Woodside Houses’ temporary boilers, which were installed after Hurricane Ida flooded the public housing’s permanent boilers in September.
Outages have been common since then, according to Won, who said her office has received over 20 heat and hot water complaints from residents of the Woodside Houses since she first took office at the beginning of January.
“This has been a consistent issue,” Won told the Eagle.
The complex’s permanent boilers were flooded in September when rain water from Hurricane Ida was diverted to the underground area where the boilers are stored. If the water had not been sent toward the boilers – which had only been installed the month before – it would have seeped into some of the complex’s first-floor apartments, which are occupied, in part, by elderly and disabled residents.
The move saved lives, according to Ocasio-Cortez, but has since left many in a precarious situation where the heat or hot water could be cut off in the dead of winter.
That was the case on Thursday, Dec. 23, when a power outage caused one of the temporary mobile boilers to malfunction. The boiler was functioning by the end of the weekend, NYCHA officials told the Eagle in December.
There are currently two, external 800-horsepower boilers installed in the complex, and a third is under construction and will serve as a backup if one of the other two fails. It’s expected to come online in the coming weeks. In total, NYCHA has spent around $1.4 million on boiler repairs at the Woodside Houses since Ida, according to a spokesperson.
“Hopefully, it'll be up soon, and the tenants will be warm,” Won said.
The lawmakers said they were told by NYCHA officials that they expect permanent boilers to be installed and up and running by the spring – the delays are attributed to a lack of federal funding, which would fund the replacement boilers, according to NYCHA officials. In a statement to the Eagle the day after the tour, a NYCHA spokesperson said the “boilers are expected to be brought online in February and once they are online, the mobile boilers will be taken offline in stages.”
“We are in the process of securing the necessary permits to begin construction and expect to bring the third boiler on-line in the next two weeks,” the spokesperson added. “At which point, it will be inspected before servicing residents.”
A third mobile boiler is installed at Woodside Houses, which lost its permanent boilers during Hurricane Ida in September. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
However, the elected officials say replacing what was will no longer cut it.
“One of the big things that I think is perhaps an elephant in the room that isn't really being discussed, is how closely tied these heat and hot water issues are with our climate crisis,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “If we don't add resiliency to our public housing for the climate crisis, we are going to continue to experience this over, and over and over again.”
“This isn't just about replacement,” she added. “What we're dealing with is a humanitarian crisis that will compound if we do not make investments that acknowledge the reality of the climate crisis.”
In instances where the heat and hot water cuts out, Woodside Houses residents have had to sleep in sweaters and coats and take other extreme measures to keep warm, according to Ramos, who grew up near the public housing complex.
“This has been happening my entire life,” Ramos said. “There’s no permanent solution in sight.”
Though NYCHA expects the permanent boilers to be providing heat and hot water by March, Ramos and her colleagues in government say there needs to be actions taken to make sure public housing in New York City is more resilient against potentially dangerous weather events, which are becoming more and more frequent.
“There may or may not be directives that NYCHA should be following in order to just make the investment in retrofitting, but it's also very expensive,” Ramos said. “And the physical structures of the buildings don't necessarily lend themselves to for the boilers to go on the roof, for example, like in many other NYCHA complexes.”
In a statement, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards bashed NYCHA for not getting a permanent fix into the complex, which houses nearly 2,900 tenants, sooner.
“As we head deeper into the winter months, it is unacceptable that the residents of Woodside Houses still do not have reliable heat and hot water,” Richards said. “NYCHA has had almost five months to fix this problem, so far without success. It needs to step up to the plate and complete its heating plant repairs so that Woodside Houses residents have the reliable heat and hot water they deserve, and are entitled to.”
NYCHA did not respond to requests for comment before print time.
