Heat issues at one Queens NYCHA building are about to be a thing of the past. Here's why.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani had some good news Wednesday for the residents of a NYCHA facility in Queens who have been battling the bitter cold without heat or hot water.
At the Beach 41st Street complex, he announced a new multi-million dollar investment.
$38 million for needed heat pump
According to Mamdani, the heat issue at the complex will be fixed immediately. On Wednesday, he said the city will spend $38 million to install heat pumps, which are expected to transform the living conditions for hundreds of tenants, providing reliable heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer.
In addition, NYCHA officials said 30,000 new heat pumps will be installed across the city over the course of the next few years.
"Residents here at Beach 41st Houses know the pain of a heat outage all too well," Mamdani said. "We are one step closer to a future where no child need grow up in an apartment where the silence of the radiator means a brutal night of cold."
Eugenia Gibson, the tenant association president of Beach 41st Street, had been advocating for better technology for years.
"We deserve to be treated as human beings. We deserve heat. We deserve hot water. So I am so thankful," Gibson said.
"My temperature was about 6 degrees in the room"
So why is this all necessary? With snow sitting on the ground, inconsistent heat and hot water has plagued the Beach 41st Street complex for a while.
CBS News New York's Allen Devlin learned it's feast or famine in the lobby. Some of the 712 units are good to go, but others not so much as they are dealing with little-to-no water or heat on a day-to-day, or even a room-to-room basis.
"Since it started getting cold, there was no heat," resident Shawn Thompson said. "It was cold in the room. My temperature was about 6 degrees in the room."
Resident Marvin Lawrence said sleeping at night is "hectic, because we gotta be in so many clothes and wrapped up in blankets and stuff."
"It's no rest. You can't sleep. You can't sleep if you're cold," resident Joe For said. "Hopefully, [the mayor] can make something happen."
