The report urges the City to immediately escalate its enforcement to transfer building ownership away from irresponsible owners to responsible owners
In an updated report to his office’s 2023 Turn Up the Heat report, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander still finds significant shortcomings in the City’s efforts to address heat complaints from tenants in the chronically coldest buildings. While the Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s (HPD) interventions (e.g. issuing violations, litigation, emergency repairs, and the heat sensor program) are effective in addressing heat complaints, HPD too often fails to apply them in a small subset of buildings with persistently inadequate heat.
The Comptroller’s original report identified 1,283 buildings where tenants complained of a lack of heat more than five times each winter between 2017 – 2021. The updated report found that since then, 901 of those 1,283 buildings remain on the list as chronically underheated for seven winters in a row. Alarmingly, 20% of those 901 buildings had had no intervention from HPD for the entire seven-year period from 2017-2024.
“The City still has not turned up the heat on landlords who leave their tenants in the cold,” said Comptroller Brad Lander. “Far too often, buildings remain cold year, after-year, after-year. 901 buildings—primarily in neighborhoods in the Bronx—have not had heat for seven years, causing tenants to turn to space heaters or running up gas bills that can pose serious risks of fires like the Twin Parks fire.”
The report compared the 2017-2021 findings with the most recent heat seasons from 2022-2024. Overall, tenants filed 203,920 more complaints annually about a lack of heat and hot water in the past two heat seasons. During the seven-year period, an annual average of 5,325 complaints (3%) became violations after an HPD inspection. Heat complaints and violations were predominantly concentrated in communities of color. The five community districts with the highest volume of 311 complaints related to a lack of heat are 90% people of color on average. The five districts with the most violations issued average 89% people of color.
The Comptroller’s office released its original report on the one-year anniversary of the fire at the tragic Twin Parks development in the Bronx that took the lives of 17 New Yorkers and injured dozens more. Deadly fires in neglected buildings continue to destabilize communities. In January 2025, a Bronx building burned–leaving over 250 residents, including 58 children– displaced from their home. Since the Comptroller’s office released its original report, space heaters caused 50 fires. Living without heat for an extended period can lead to a serious decline in tenants’ mental and physical health, and residents will often turn to unsafe methods, such as portable heaters, to keep themselves and their families warm.
The report found that when deployed, the City’s enforcement strategies for addressing heat complaints are generally effective. Issuing violations, litigation, use of the Emergency Repair Program, and the Heat Sensor Program reduced the number of heat complaints in the following heat season. However, HPD is not effectively deploying the tools of the agency in the subset of 901 buildings that have chronic and persistent issues due to the lack of heat for seven years.
The Comptroller’s report reinforces the first report’s recommendations including more strategic use of data and technology to prioritize inspections, streamlining the inspection scheduling process, conducting comprehensive site inspections jointly with HPD and DOB, and expanding proactive code enforcement and targeted escalation.
However, given the stubborn subset of buildings with persistent heat issues, HPD must immediately escalate its enforcement mechanisms to transfer building ownership away from owners that disregard tenant health and safety and into the hands of responsible owners.
Lander continued, “Slowly freezing your tenants is a cold move and landlords who endanger tenant lives should be held to the highest account. If landlords are unwilling to turn up the heat, HPD must turn up the pressure, take away their ownership and give it to someone who will.”
To tackle the number of buildings with persistent heat issues, the report makes additional recommendations to improve or create programs to help get these buildings out of the hands of neglectful owners:
- Expand the use of the 7A Program to appoint non-profit administrators to operate buildings where conditions are dangerous to a tenants’ life and safety.
- Immediately relaunch and adequately fund the Neighborhood Pillars program to enable non-profits to acquire and rehabilitate buildings with chronic and persistent heat issues.
- Pass Intro 1063-2024 of the Housing Rescue and Resident Protection Act (HRRPA) to create a new pathway for the City to pursue foreclosure to address issues in physically and financially distressed properties while protecting tenants in place.
Read the full report: https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/turn-up-the-heat-2025-update/
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