New Yorkers made 80,000 calls to 311 reporting residential heating and hot water shortages in January 2026 — the highest monthly number on record — as private and public housing tenants told The Post they were trapped in poor conditions and blamed Mayor Zohran Mamdani for failing to act.
Complaints came amid heavy snow, with employers across the city reporting days without heat, cold showers and overnight closures as temperatures plunged into the teens.
Alex Hughes, who rents in Williamsburg, said the condition of his building is so bad that he recently packed his bags and moved to a hotel.
“We’ve had over 40 days without hot water in the last 11 months. And now we’re on our eighth or ninth straight day without hot water,” Hughes told The Post. I had to walk 15 minutes in snow and ice to my friend’s house to shower.”
In Astoria, Queens, Nicole Pavez, 31, a New York City city planner, said the current cold snap has pushed her building’s already unreliable heating system to critical condition, forcing her to huddle indoors and dress her dog in sweaters to keep warm.
“For the past week, the heat has been coming out almost every night,” Pavez told The Post. “You wake up in the middle of the night in the cold, and there’s nothing you can do but lie down and wait.”
Public housing tenants are also frozen out of their homes, with one NYCHA resident slamming the authority as the “worst mother-landlord” in a social media video and calling on the mayor to intervene as temperatures near ten degrees.
Another tenant, Malik Williams, 27, who has lived in Lehman Houses since 2009, said his house was unheated in January, forcing residents to rely on unsafe places.
“Last month, we had no heat,” Williams told The Post. “We had to boil water on the stove just to keep the house warm, we also bought portable heaters.” The heat was restored at the end of the month. “They just set us back by putting the heat back on,” he said, adding that NYCHA blamed the ice break.
Since the start of the heating season on Oct. 1, the city filed about 215,045 heat complaints to 311 and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), which already surpassed the 187,775 complaints recorded during the same period last winter, city data compiled by The Post show.
The attack comes as Mamdani has proposed the appointment of housing activist Cea Weaver as the city’s new tenant protection chief, positioning her as a champion for tenants and a key role in the administration’s push to fight against negligent landlords and improve living conditions across the city.
Weaver has previously argued for stronger tenant protections and less reliance on private ownership models, an approach that has drawn renewed scrutiny as heating failures proliferate across private and public housing.
Mamdani was also called before the City Council to account for the city’s cold weather emergency, with lawmakers questioning whether his approach is enough to protect New Yorkers as heat complaints reach record highs.
HEAT REQUIRED BY LAW — BUT NOT ALWAYS DELIVERED
Under city code, homeowners are required to maintain indoor temperatures of at least 68 degrees during the day and 62 degrees overnight between Oct. 1 and May 31. But in buildings with financial distress or absent ownership, tenants say those legal standards can quickly become empty promises.
In Astoria, Pavez said the problems are worst overnight, when the heat often goes out during the coldest.
“They will keep burning intermittently during the day, but then it will be closed at night,” he said. “Many nights ago, it left at midnight and didn’t come back until morning.”
He said he now relies on layers, blankets, and space heaters to get through the cold, despite safety concerns.
Sometimes I turn on the space heater even though it’s stressful,” Pavez said. “You always balance staying warm against risk.”
His dog’s health added urgency to the situation.
“He got pneumonia one winter,” she said. “At this time it is cold, I have been wearing sweaters in the house because it is very cold.
Pavez said that he has contacted the property managers many times and filed 311 complaints, but he believes that the gaps will make it difficult for the house owners to be accountable, especially if there is a disturbance throughout the night.
“The sad thing about HPD is that they are not available to check in the middle of the night,” he said. “That makes it much harder to catch homeowners when they turn off the heat.”
City officials insist the law is in effect. A Housing Preservation and Development source told The Post that as of Jan. 22, about 12,000 original heat complaints have been closed, many with an inspection or a tenant’s assurance that the heat has been restored. That number represents a fraction of the nearly 80,000 complaints filed in January alone.
Despite ongoing problems, Pavez said the move is not financially feasible.
“Even if the rent is increased, it is cheaper than many places nearby,” he said. “It’s close to the subway, it’s convenient and the transportation is cheap.”
‘NIGHT SCENE’
As heating problems have worsened over the years, some tenants have banded together to hold back rent and take legal action, saying conditions have reached critical levels during the recent cold snap.
In Williamsburg, at 491 Keap St., Hughes said the deterioration increased as building workers disappeared and essential services stopped.
“Basically, the building was abandoned,” Hughes told The Post. “There will be no heat for 15 days in one year. No garbage collection. No cleaning. Nothing.”
The situation worsened during the long blackout last winter, when the cold was accompanied by a shortage of basic services.
“That’s when it was like ten degrees outside. It’s a complete crisis,” he said.
Like other renters interviewed, Hughes said rent increases in the area are leaving residents stranded.
“My rent is $3,600, but comparable houses are $5,500, $6,000, $6,500,” he said. “I can’t move.”
Karlyn Murphy, 31, another tenant in the building, said residents began to see the magnitude of the problem in 2023, when utility shutdown notices appeared and basic services slowed down.
“We started having problems with heat and hot water at the beginning of 2023,” said Murphy.
He said later the tenants found out that the owner of the building failed to pay important debts.
“The highest notice we received was about $350,000 in unpaid electric bills,” Murphy said. “And we were like, ‘We pay rent every month. What are you doing with our money?’
Murphy said the situation worsened when management and staff disappeared completely.
“The building has been officially vacated by the owner, Chetrit Group, and Plaza Management,” he said. “Garbage piled up on the roof. Packages were everywhere.”
Without hot water during the freeze, Murphy said he used temporary solutions.
“I was boiling water just to soak my feet after being out in the cold,” she said. “That’s when it got to how bad things got.”
PUBLIC HOUSING UNDER THE MICROSCOPE
Residents of public housing say they are facing similar failures. NYCHA, which runs one of the nation’s largest public housing programs, has long struggled with aging infrastructure and maintenance backlogs, problems that have come into focus during the cold season.
Juanita Arnold, 61, who has lived at Lehman Houses since 2008, said she went three months without heat, from October to December, for the first time in 15 years in NYCHA.
“When it was cold in October, there was no heat at all,” said Arnold. “In October, November, and December they put it together.” He said that many times he cried for help and got nowhere. “I was told you can’t call 311 anymore so they don’t pay the fine, keep getting tickets.”
Arnold said he avoided using his stove to keep warm and credited his age for getting through it. “Menopause saved me,” she said. “If it wasn’t like that, I would have been cold there.”
He urged the City Hall to act quickly. “We pay our rent. We need to live in a better place.”
Although Weaver and other housing advocates have argued against tightening public housing controls, critics point to the ongoing failure of NYCHA’s development heating system as evidence that the city can’t even effectively manage existing public housing.
Court records show that during the winter of 2017-18, more than 80 percent of NYCHA residents experienced heat or hot water outages, a level of disruption that prompted lawsuits and agency oversight. Recent analysis finds thousands of unplanned service interruptions, some houses colder inside than outside during extreme weather.
Geraldine Williams, 65, who has lived at Lehman Houses since 2009, said her house was without heat for about a week during the recent cold snap, with service restored a few days ago.
“I didn’t have a fever for about a week,” said Williams. “I put water in the pot to keep warm.”
She said NYCHA told her they were “working on it,” but the tenants have not received compensation. “My rent is never late,” she said. “And no, nothing” when asked about the return.
NYCHA officials told The Post that they operate a 24/7 heat desk and emergency response system and have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on heating infrastructure upgrades in recent years. But for residents who endure days without heat in the depths of winter, those assurances often sound vague.
NYCHA faces an estimated $78 billion repair backlog, underscoring the magnitude of the challenge facing City Hall as it promises to put tenants first while the temperatures are unforgiving.
In a statement sent to The Post, Matt Rauschenbach, Deputy Secretary of Housing Affairs at City Hall defended their response.
“Through the Mayor’s Office of Tenant Protection, these administrators are looking closely at the Housing Maintenance Code and how it is being implemented,” Rauschenbach said.
