The Community Service Society of New York
10/18/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 10/18/2024 08:57
Testimony: Pass Int 429 and Int 925 to Improve Housing Safety and Protect Residents
October 18th, 2024
Testimony: Pass Int 429 and Int 925 to Improve Housing Safety and Protect Residents
Oksana MironovaSamuel SteinIziah Thompson
Thank you, Chair Sanchez and the New York City Council Committee on Housing and Buildings for holding this hearing. Our names are Oksana Mironova, Iziah Thompson, and Samuel Stein, and we are senior policy analysts at the Community Service Society of New York (CSS). For over 175 years, CSS has advocated for low-income New Yorkers. Throughout that time, we have maintained a focus on housing affordability, quality, and stability.
We are here today to testify in support of Int 429 and Int 925, both of which would make the city's aging residential housing stock safer by expanding inspections and repairs of gas piping systems and requiring annual inspections of steam radiators located in dwellings where a child under six resides.
CSS's engagement with the health and safety of the city's housing stock goes back to our advocacy for the city's tenement housing laws of 1901 and 1919, which set minimum size requirements for apartments and created fire safety, lighting, ventilation, and plumbing standards. Today, a substantial share of the city's 2.3 million tenant households continue to live in the same apartments that were built in the wake of those Tenement Housing Laws.
Eighty-three percent of the city's apartments are in buildings that are at least 50 years old, while 16 percent are in buildings built before 1919. Some of these buildings have been subject to the whims of multiple negligent landlords for decades, who have cut costs by deferring maintenance. At the same time, the city's proactive code enforcement capabilities have waned.
This combination of factors has resulted in unhealthy and unsafe living conditions for many. For example, one in five New York households experienced heating breakdowns, according to the 2023 Housing Vacancy Survey (HVS). Households earning under 300 percent of the federal poverty line were more likely to not have heat in the winter: nearly one in four experienced a heating breakdown in 2023.
At the same time, the 2023 HVS also found that 38 percent of households had to keep their windows open in the winter for some or most of the time, because their apartments were overheated. In most cases, this is a symptom of aging and imprecise steam heating systems.
Sometimes, deferred maintenance of heating systems leads to tragedy. In 2024, 11-month-old Binyomin Zachariah Kuravsky was killed by a faulty radiator in Brooklyn. In 2016, one-year-old Scylee Vayoh Ambrose and two-year-old Ibanez Ambrose, were killed by scalding heat from a steam radiator.
We at CSS compel the City Council to take action on Int 429 and Int 925, and to ensure that the agencies that are charged with enforcing these laws are fully funded in next years budget.
If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected].