NYC NOW - Know Your Rights: What Tenants Need to Know as NYC's Heat Season Begins

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

October 1st marks the start of heat season in New York City, when landlords are legally required to keep buildings warm... but getting a landlord to actually fix a heat problem can be its own battle. Tenants' rights attorney Leah Goodridge walks us through what tenants are entitled to and the steps she, herself, took to get the hot water back in her apartment. Then, WNYC and Gothamist housing reporter David Brand breaks down landlords' perspective on why heat repairs can take as long as they do and also what the city's new policy requiring inspectors to check every complaint individually means for New Yorkers.Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesGot any questions, comments or story ideas? Send us a message at [e-mail] must redo his pied-à-terre tax rollout, NY judge ordersWhat Trump's Title IX rollback means for LGBTQ+ students in New York  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From WNYC, this is NYC now. I'm Jene Pierre. A lot of landlords get into this mode of like, all right, well, we'll see what we can do. We'll get you back later this week. And it's like, later this week. Have you ever had a heat outage in your apartment? Yeah, it's no fun, especially in the dead of winter. But there are laws in place that can help.

On today's show, we'll share what tenants need to know as heat season starts in New York City. But before we get into that, here's a few news stories we're following. A judge is sending Mayor Zoran Mamdani back to the drawing board to redo the rollout for his pieter tax. That's a tax on second homes worth $5 million or more, and condos worth at least a million bucks. Mamdani got the news this week after a judge invalidated the notices that the city sent earlier this summer, telling owners that they may be subject to the new surcharge. Now, the city will have to issue new notices. New York education officials say protections for LGBTQ plus students remain in place despite the Trump administration's rollback of federal Title IX rules.

They cite state and city laws barring discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Still, civil rights groups say the federal rollback sense a harmful message to LGBTQ plus students. For more on this story and the previous one I mentioned, visit our news site, Gothamist. I'm excited to share that the New York Liberty are heading to the second round of the WMBA playoffs. The Libs defeated the Minnesota Lynx 87 to 71 at Barclays Center Tuesday night, and it was a historic win. The Libs became the first eight-seeded team to defeat the top seat in the WMBA's 30-year history. Now the teams just waiting to see who they'll play next.

Gotta admit, it's a good day to be a Liberty fan. Okay, let's get on with the show. October 1st marks the official start of heat season here in New York City. From October until the end of May, landlords are legally required to start keeping their buildings warm when temperatures outside drop below certain levels. This year, city officials are also changing how they respond when tenants say their heat isn't working. Now, you all may remember Leah Goodrich. She's a friend of the show.

She's a tenants' rights attorney and a former member of the Rant Guidelines Board. She joins us now to break down what tenants need to know during this time of year. Leah, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for having me back. Yes, it's always good to have you around. You know, before we dive in here, what are the rules here exactly? Yeah, the rules are once October starts, if the temperature outside drops of 55 or lower, then your landlord has to provide heat indoors.

And the heat has to be adequate. So sometimes, for example, I've had clients. where there's a little tiny bit of heat, and it's so little that it doesn't actually even feel like they have heat. So that's an example of where we say it has to be 68 degrees or higher indoors. I know every time you come on the show, you share these stories from clients or cases that you've been a part of. Can you talk about some that come to mind?

Yeah, I've had a bunch of cases where I have had to sue landlords or sometimes even the city due to, inadequate heat or no heat. And I used to have a ton of cases in Brooklyn and the bronze. And I remember one lady elderly, she had no heat. And so it was really important that the landlord repaired the heat. And so what she had to do first, you know, we file the case. The HPD inspector came out. And I made sure to tell her, and I was there, you know, do not have your apartment hot or warm before the inspector comes. If you know that they're coming,

why is it? You know, because if they can't prove that there's no heat, then the inspector is not going to write it as a violation of the housing maintenance code. So if the inspector comes and feels like, oh, it feels warm to me, then there is no proof.

You know, and you might say, oh, feel the radiator, it's cold to the touch. And sometimes, and I've seen this happen many of times, and this is what happened with this lady, you know, oh, well, the radiator feels cold to the touch, but it could have been on 30 minutes ago, could have been on 10 minutes ago. So I don't have any proof, right?

And so we had to reschedule an inspection so that the inspector could come and see that the apartment was ice cold. Wow. But this lady is still, you know, cold inside her home. What's the timeline like when the inspector has to come back and forth? You know, this is the other thing, too. I highly recommend that tenants be very diligent about calls. the Code Enforcement Department of HPD, because sometimes an inspector will come for the first time and it'll be a surprise visit. Like, you don't actually know when they're coming.

And then they'll say, oh, we came and you weren't home, so we're closing the ticket. What? I know. And so I highly recommend that tenants be ready to call them to say, can we schedule a time for you to come? In your experience, I'm wondering, what's the biggest obstacle that tenants run into when they're trying to? to get their heat restored. You know, one of the biggest obstacles is why the heat actually is off. So if it's something like there needs to be a switch that needs to be turned on or there

needs to be a pipe valve that needs to be switched on, that's easy. But if it's, oh, you need to replace the boiler, that is going to take some time. That's a more structural issue. The landlord has to go find the parts. And most landlords, you know, they're negotiating prices. And so that can be a major issue. the reason why the heat is off might be something much bigger. Yeah.

And, you know, you mentioned the boiler. It's reminding me of a situation of a friend of mine, a landlord decides, okay, I know what the issue is. I'm not going to fix it. What options, you know, does a tenant have then? You take them to court, right? That's where I come in. I'm still cold. I'm still cold.

That's it. You take them to court. Whether it's a gas heater or something else, you know, I thought of the boiler immediately because I have gone through issues myself. I've lived in my apartment for a very long time, and I mean, I've been there for over a decade. And I had an issue twice with no hot water, and both times I turned into a huge villain.

I don't like to do the like, I am a tenant and a turn. Like, I like to just be in my apartment and mine, my business. But I mean, I turned into a ridiculous villain. My landlord was like, wow, because a lot of landlords get into this mode of like, all right, well, we'll see what we can do. Well, get you back later this week. And it's like, later this week, I need to know tomorrow morning. So that's how I was like, oh, absolutely not.

Yeah. It's suffering, right? Whether it's no heat, no hot water, you know, these are what's called essential services. So, yes, you can file a court case and you can take them to court. And the court will, you know, ideally there will be a court order to force them to provide these services by a certain timeline. And if they don't, they will be held in contempt. And in your experience, what is that timeline like usually? If it's just no heat, then I have done like 14 days, right?

But if it's no heat and other repairs, then I have done staggered timelines, like 14 days for the no heat. But for the other things, you have 30 days or you have like 45 days. And remember, you have a lot of landlords who come to court and they're like, listen, we are not a company, we are people, we own this. We have to go and find parts. We have to negotiate prices. It's not, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day. We need time. And, you know, a lot of judges are like, oh, okay, you know, this sounds, it's a business.

So we get it. And so they end up getting a lot of time. I just want to go back to this because you called yourself a villain. A total, like, I mean, I should have had my own reality show. I advocated and the water got turned back on. But when I say, I mean, I turn into a villain. villain, it was like, I was in my kitchen. I used the water. It was fine. And I swear, like, 30 minutes later, I went to, like, do some cooking. And I'm like, hey, the water's taking a long time to become hot.

What's going on? And then it's like, okay, it's been running for a full two minutes. It's not coming on. And I was sort of in denial, like, oh, my God, I have no hot water. Then it was like, well, maybe, maybe, you know, I had the denial part. I was like, you know, But I'm going to wait five minutes and then I'm going to turn it on again. And sure enough, it was ice cold. Because I'm thinking like, no, just 30 minutes ago. Renters denial is a real thing. Yeah, so I contacted my landlord immediately.

Like, we don't have any hot water. And the funniest part was I live in a small building and I don't think anybody else contacted them. So I was like, we don't have any hot water. And I'm pretty sure this is a building wide issue. Then I like knocked on doors, knocked on my neighbor's doors. And my neighbors were like, yeah, you know what? actually I don't have any hot water. I'm like, actually, like, this is a crisis.

Has this not bothered you? Yeah, so I'm like, what are you talking about? So I'm like, the whole building has no hot water. And so then the landlord's like, oh, okay, we got to figure out. So they send someone, it's not back on. So you've got to send someone else, right? And then they're like, oh, okay. And the long and short of it is, it took five days.

And I know from doing this work that sometimes it's literally like 30 days. Right. Sometimes it's 14 days. And I genuinely think that it took five days because I was like, okay, you know you're going to get fine, right? You know we're going to, like, please do not. I'm already a villain. Please do not make me turn into even more of a villain. And I think they were like, okay, she's serious.

So, yeah. I'm very cautious, especially with my personal boundaries in space. So I don't want to be like the tenant guru where I live. I don't want neighbors coming to be like, oh, hey, now I want to ask you a question like, Oh, no, I'm home. I'm cooking my macaroni pie. I want to just enjoy myself. But, yes, the no-hat water, the two incidents in the 15 years turned me into a huge villain.

Wow. Well, earlier, I asked about the timeline, you know, when you go to court and you have a case. Because I'm thinking about the woman in the Bronx, your client, and, you know, she had this case. She brought it. She's still without heat. Fourteen days go by. maybe a month. All this time, she has to find a way to keep herself warm, right? There are safe ways to do that, like layering and buying more blankets. There are unsafe ways to do that,

like space heaters and boiling water. Either way, though, I'm wondering, is there financial support for people who are just waiting for heat restoration? Unfortunately, in terms of an actual benefit, none that I can think of, but there is, if you were a rent-stabilized tenant, a way to get your rent reduced. You can get what's called a rent reduction, and you submit a form. It's literally called the rent-reduction form to DHCR. And there is an application for both the building and for your individual apartment. I always tell tenants, you know, you can do both, but I tell them, of course, do your individual apartment. And if your rent, say, is like $1,000. you know, for a one bedroom, then it'll get reduced. So it'll be lower than $1,000 until the heat

gets back on. Wow. Okay. So I didn't know that exists. Yeah. Landlords hate it and it does tend to spur them to action. Yeah. You know, all these things that tenants encounter when they're already in a unit, you know, we're talking about the loss of heat. But if someone is in a crazy apartment search once again right now, right this moment. How can they get like a sense of how responsive a landlord would be in a situation like the loss of heat? I tell tenants all the time, go to HPD online and in the blank spot where it says fill in address, you fill in the address of the apartment that you're interested in. And then you go to the top and you click on complaints and then you click on violations. The complaints actually show.

show what tenants have called 311 about for that building. Okay. And I highly recommend that you look at complaints first because violations is half the story. Violations are only when an HBD inspector has come out to basically validate the complaint. But as we talked about before, sometimes there are real issues, but the inspector will not listed as a violation. Or sometimes the tenant is not home when the inspector is there. So then there's just no violation.

So I need for you all to look at the complaints, right? Most tenants are not calling 3-1-1 for fun just to be like, oh, I have work. Let me just take time out the day to call and give it like a fake complaint, right? Like most tenants are not doing that, right? And so I always tell people, whatever you see up there, take it as this is happening in the building. So if you see people complaining about no heat, for example, there probably is no heat. And the other thing to look at in assessing this is how many tenants are complaining about the same thing? Because sometimes, you know, you are interested in apartment 4D and you see 10 complaints in this 50 unit building, but it's only from 3B, these all 10 complaints.

And you're like, hmm, this building's pretty big, but only one unit is complaining. maybe that might be localized to that one unit. But if you look on there and it's like a bunch of tenants complaining and they're all complaining about the same thing, then that's the big red flag. That's Leah Goodrich, Tenant's Rights Attorney, talking about what tenants are up against when a landlord just won't act right when your heats out.

Thanks a lot, Leah. Thank you for having me. Coming up, the city says it's changing how it responds to heat complaints, starting October 1st, we'll ask WNYC housing reporter David Brand, whether that actually fixes the problems that Leah just laid out. Stay with us. Up until now, if multiple tenants in the same building complained about heat, housing inspectors could treat those complaints as duplicates

and close them all at once without necessarily inspecting every single apartment in the building. Now the city says every non-anonymous complaint will get its own inspection. WMYC and Gothamist housing reporter David Fran has been covering this housing policy and he joins me now. David, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Happy heat season, Janay? Happy heat season to you as well. I'm so happy that we even are talking about this in this way because it is an issue, you know, that people go through time and time again going through the winter without the appropriate heat in your unit.

Yeah, it can be brutal. Yeah. And what Leah described before the break, you know, tenants filing complaints and, really getting nowhere. Is that the exact problem the city's new policy is supposed to solve? Yes, that's exactly what it's supposed to solve because a lot of times tenants will make a complaint about heat in their building and maybe it's resolved in one portion of the building, but not their unit or not an entire side of the building. Maybe radiators along an entire line aren't working, but if that complaint is closed, the inspector leaves and then they have to

file another complaint and wait again. So I'm really looking to see how this is going to affect the work that the city's housing agency, HPD is already doing. You know, they're already contending with hundreds of thousands of complaints. We've seen those numbers soar in the past few years from about 700,000 reported complaints in fiscal year 2022 to new data that just came out a couple weeks ago showing there were 950,000 complaints. Oh, wow. Big portion of those are heat complaints, takes a city two days. at the median time to respond to these. So they're not only going to have to put this new policy into effect,

they're going to really have to focus on sending inspectors and hitting all of these units. It's going to be a lot of work. So, David, you mentioned that the median time for response is about two days. What counts as a complete response? Well, it's inspectors showing up, taking temperature in the apartment, and trying to verify the complaint. So that's not me getting my heat restored.

Right, right. That's just the inspector checking it out and taking that temperature reading. And then we don't have data on how quickly they close heat complaints, but what the HPD data shows is that it's a median time of three days to close all types of emergency complaints. And when we talk about these inspectors and HPD, as far as staffing, are they staffed enough to handle all of the tenants' complaints that we're seeing across the city? Well, we'll see. You know, I don't know the latest staffing numbers we saw in the prior administration that housing inspectors, like a lot of staff at city agencies, there were a lot of vacant staff lines. This is such a priority of the Mamdani administration. I imagine they're going to prioritize continuing to hire more inspectors to make sure that these rules are being enforced. Yeah. You know, the big thing that we're pointing out in today's episode is know your rights, you know. From your perspective as a housing reporter, I wonder, what are.

are five things New Yorkers should be aware that they have the right to when it comes to keeping warm this season. Well, it's a great question because New York City actually has a tenant's bill of rights that lists five categories that tenants do have the right to in their apartment. So the first is fair and equal access to housing, so a ban on discrimination. Then we have housing quality, which is really what we're talking about now. Then a right to a lease and to get your security deposit back in a timely fashion. we've reported on a lot. Yeah. It should be 14 days after you move out.

Right to not be evicted or locked out illegally. You have to go through a court process before your landlord could actually evict you. And then a right against landlord harassment and your ability to organize with your fellow tenants. Okay. So let's talk a bit more about the one that you pointed out that we're talking about today. Housing quality. We're talking heat, hot water. What else here?

Yeah, exactly. Heat, hot water. running water in apartments free from dangerous conditions. And that's something that the inspectors at the city's housing agency will determine. They will respond to reported complaints and then issue violations. And you have a right as a tenant to get those resolved by your landlord. And if something's going on, of course, you should call 311. 311 is who you call. All right. What about public housing? How do tenants make complaints there? Well, tenants in public housing, New York City Housing Authority or NYCHA apartments, can call the

customer complaint center. They also have the option now to call 311 to file a complaint. Okay. But we've been talking about heat. And heat outages have been a major problem for tenants in public housing for many years. Boilers breaking, NYCHA, or now we have a lot of these buildings that are turned over to private managers who are responsible for repairing them. Could be slow to make those repairs, as I think a lot of listeners who live in public housing can probably attest. It's actually been one of the things that a federal monitor who was put in place in 2019 has focused on is tracking NCHA's heat outage response times and the number of outages that are happening. And they found that 84% of NCHA households had at least one outage last heat season. That's a lot.

They said for context, that's more than 100,000 households. Man. So I'll be looking ahead to see how NITHA response to those outages this year. So the policy change now says that HPD has to inspect every single unit in a building where tenants have complained about the heat. So we know what's changing on paper with this new policy. But how will we know, you know, if tenants' experiences actually improve? Well, I guess we're going to look at that data. We'll see if there's just a higher volume of complaints.

Same when it comes to the city's housing agency. I'll be checking periodically to see if there's. are more outage complaints if it's taking a longer time for inspectors to get to these complaints to inspect because now there's so many more that I imagine they're going to be getting. And so we're going to check, you know, those metrics. We'll talk with tenants to see what their experience is, if they are noticing any difference from these policies. And I think in a few months when it gets colder, we'll definitely have some more insight into that. What still doesn't change in this housing policy? Is there any way the new rules fall short?

Well, I think there's another side to this that maybe tenants don't think of or a lot of people who don't live in apartments with heat outages might not think of. And that's a side that the landlords will raise and say, you know, we know it's our responsibility to provide heat. But it also costs money. And so we see, as I mentioned at the top, that the number of complaints, the number of violations are rising. And landlords and their representatives will say, well, in a lot of cases, that's because we don't have as much money available to do. repairs and maintenance. And that's having a real tangible impact on the number of violations and problems you're seeing. And when it comes to rent-stabilized departments, they would say, look, our income is capped based on the rent stabilization rules. Now we can't raise rents.

Another thing that happens October 1st is the new rent stabilization rules. The rent freeze takes effect. And so they're saying, look, if you want us to do more maintenance and repair things faster, then we need to be able to raise rents to afford to do that. And so I think in some cases, that's a cop-out. You know, this is a responsibility. This has happened way before the tighter rent regulations took effect. But in some cases, there, you know, people are kind of tight when it comes to money. And it affects how you can do maintenance or get replacement parts or fix boilers in a pinch. Yeah, you're absolutely right. So, David, I know you plan to keep an eye on this, especially when the data comes out in September of next year. But in the short term, what are you watching for? Well, I'm watching to see if this has any impact on the response times for inspectors. You know, I said that in the most recent mayor's management report, it showed that there was a two-day median response time for heat outage complaints in apartments over the past fiscal year. That's consistent with the past few years.

It's been right around that two-day response time. So I want to see if that goes up because now there's more work to do or there's a higher volume of complaints. So we shall see. And I'll be paying attention to that. All right. That's WNYC and Gotham is housing reporter David Brand. Thanks a lot, David. Thanks, Janae.

And thank you for listening to NYC now. I'm Jene Pierre. See you next time.