FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM JANUARY 18, 2018 • THE QUEENS COURIER 11
These Queens neighborhoods had the most heat complaints so far this year
BY ANGELA MATUA
amatua@qns.com / @angelamatua
Th e bomb cyclone on Jan. 4 blanketed
large parts of the northeast with snow and
resulted in bitter cold temperatures and
high-speed winds. It also left many apartments
without heat and hot water like the
Woodside Houses, which experienced a
boiler outage.
RentHop, a real estate search engine,
compiled data to analyze what neighborhoods
and addresses reported the most
heat-related complaints in 2018.
Th e New York City heat season lasts
from Oct. 1 through May 31 when landlords
are required to provide heat to tenants
if the weather outside falls below a
certain temperature.
RentHop has been keeping track of
complaints since 2010 and found that the
fi rst week of 2018 broke a record — there
were nearly as many heat complaints in
the fi rst week of 2018 as there were in the
past three years’ fi rst weeks combined.
Neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn
and Manhattan were featured prominently
on the list and Queens does not
show up until the 34th slot when Hollis
appears. Shane Leese, the data scientist
who worked on the study, broke down the
complaints in three ways: raw complaints,
de-duped complaints that removed
repeated calls to 311 by the same tenant
and normalized complaints.
According to Leese, looking at the normalized
complaints is “the fairest way”
to analyze what neighborhoods had the
most complaints this year (up to Jan. 7).
Th e data point represents unique complaints
per 1,000 rental units. A more
populated neighborhood would obviously
record more complaints so normalized
complaints account for this issue.
Residents in Hollis, according to 311
data, reported 61 complaints during the
heat season in 2018 compared to 45 last
heat season. Since the current heat season
doesn’t end until May of this year, there
has already been a 34.7 percent increase
in the number of complaints and that percentage
will probably rise.
Laurelton is ranked 46 on the list with
51.5 complaints this heat season compared
to 44.7 in 2016-2017, a 15.3 percent
increase.
Th e neighborhood of Bayswater in Far
Rockaway recorded 47.5 complaints, an
18 percent increase since 2017, while
South Jamaica and St. Albans recorded
46 and 46.1 complaints this heat season,
respectively.
Th e study also found that complaints
are less common as rents rise. In Flushing,
where the median rent is $1,800 a total of
25 complaints per 1,000 rental units were
recorded this year. Th e median rent in
Hollis, where the most complaints in
Queens were recorded, is $1,650.
Some neighborhoods also saw a dramatic
increase in heat complaints this
season. In Old Astoria, the northernmost
portion of the neighborhood, heat complaints
jumped 90.2 percent, from 11.6
during the last heat season to 22 complaints
during the heat season in 2018.
Queensboro Hill, a section of Flushing,
saw a 116 percent spike in complaints
from 9.3 during the last heat season to
20.2 this year.
Th e study also shows the top heat complaints
by address and the property at
72-10 41st Ave. in Elmhurst received 155
complaints this year compared to 195
last year.
Th e rental building at 89-21 Elmhurst
Ave. received 1,298 complaints this heat
season compared to 483 last heat season.
While working on this study, Leese
found that many of the same apartment
buildings keep showing up on his lists
year aft er year.
“Th e same landlords in the same areas
still aren’t adequately heating their
buildings, and the same Department of
Housing isn’t doing enough to make sure
these people aren’t cold,” he said in the
study.
NYCHA tenants were particularly vulnerable
during the bomb cycle with more
than 6,500 units losing access to heat and
hot water. A New York Post report found
that the city lost approximately 100 boiler
repair employees with 243 heating technicians
as of Dec. 29 compared to 347 that
were allocated in the city budget.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said that much of
the boiler equipment is decades old and
that heating technicians are not qualifi ed
to maintain new boilers installed at several
NYCHA complexes. Th e city is currently
looking to hire technicians who
have experience with the new technology,
he told the Post.
Photo courtesy of pixelbay
A study by RentHop collected data to fi nd the neighborhoods with the most heat complaints during
the 2018 heat season.
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