Bronx residents lodge the most heat and hot water complaints in NYC

Heat season began this week in New York City, which means that landlords are required to provide heat to their tenants until May 31.

Unfortunately, according to an analysis from the website Localize.city, and as The City first reported, complaints about heat and hot water are the most common on the city’s 311 hotline.

“Not having heat or hot water is not only a hardship but also illegal,” Nir Gonen, a data scientist at Localize, said in a statement. “Heat and hot water are basic needs.”

There have been 221,858 heat-related 311 complaints in the past 12 months, according to Localize.city’s analysis. The borough with the most of those during the past year is the Bronx, with 73,607; followed by Brooklyn with 67,554; Manhattan with 48,583; Queens with 29,787; and Staten Island with 2,327.

As far as building complaints in specific neighborhoods, the top five with the most are Crown Heights with complaints in 1,264 buildings, Harlem, with 1,024, East New York with 994, Bedford Stuyvesant with 988, and Washington Heights with 953.

Courtesy of Localize.city

And the analysis gets even more specific, going into the buildings that have received the most complaints in the past year: 89-21 Elmhurst Avenue in Elmhurst, (3,174), 9511 Shore Road in Bay Ridge (1,026), 1711 H. Tubman Avenue in Bed-Stuy (863), 2750 Homecrest Avenue in Brighton Beach (855), and 2040 Bronxdale Avenue in Pelham Parkway (795).

In all, make sure you know all your rights as a tenant in NYC. Landlords should abide by the rules in NYC’s Housing Maintenance Code and the state’s Multiple Dwelling Law, which both require them to keep temperatures at a certain level during heat season and provide hot water 24 hours a day during the entire year.