Small heat pump, big difference

Maria Lopez was not used to her fifth-floor apart­ment being a comfort­able, livable temperature. 

“I was one of the tenants that didn’t have heat,” she said, refer­ring to all the winters before the new heat pumps were installed. ​“I was shiv­ering and cold until my neighbor gave me a space heater, and I had to sleep with it right on my face. But when they put this new unit in, it was fantastic.”

Before the heat pumps, Maria, who lives at NYCHA’s Woodside Houses, relied on central heat that didn’t always reach her floor, and fans or open windows in the summer. 

Now, her apart­ment has three compact, quiet units — one in the living room, and one in each bedroom, all of which she can control indi­vid­u­ally. Aside from granting her phys­ical comfort in her own home, the heat pumps have also offered emotional relief from the stress of frequently filing main­te­nance requests, being ignored, and not feeling valued as a tenant. 

Tammy Reyes, a fellow resi­dent and tenants’ asso­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent at Woodside, would see the complaints rolling in from her fellow resi­dents and push for more atten­tion from NYCHA, but the incon­sis­tency and unre­li­a­bility of the central systems made it hard to make any real progress.

“I had tenants where — in the same building — you would have two lines that were complaining about too much heat, and two lines with no heat at all,” said Reyes.

When the heat was looked at by main­te­nance, it often resulted in band-aid fixes that wouldn’t last or resolve the issue for the full building.

“They’d come in with a ther­mometer to check every­thing and see that we weren’t telling no tales,” Reyes said. ​“They would boost [the heat] really high up, we would get some type of heat that would make it a little bit better. But by the time it got up to the third floor, it would shut back down, so the people upstairs still wasn’t getting no heat, because it was a six-floor building.”

And that instance wasn’t the first time these resi­dents have been left without adequate heat. Hurricane Ida left Woodside resi­dents without reli­able heat and hot water for over a year. The main boiler was submerged in over five feet of water following the storm, and even with tempo­rary replace­ments, the housing complex — home to nearly 3,000 resi­dents — was left in the lurch.

In the summers, too, cooling was also regu­lated. Heat was suppos­edly guar­an­teed, but air condi­tioning was only avail­able for a fee. ​“You had to pay $10 a month for an air condi­tioner to be in your window,” said Reyes. ​“The HRs [housing repre­sen­ta­tives] would walk around the build­ings checking to see who had air condi­tioners. And on top of that, you were only allowed two air condi­tioners per apart­ment. Now every bedroom and the living room gets this unit,” Reyes said. ​“The resi­dents are getting the best of both worlds.”

Reyes spends lots of time in the office at Woodside, often holding tenant meet­ings, so the changes were felt heavily by her too. Before the heat pumps went in, she said, ​“We used to have meet­ings and we would liter­ally sit with our coats on.” She said that it wasn’t uncommon in the winters to see your breath while inside.

Once the new equip­ment was in, the prac­tical impacts did not disap­point. Lopez said the instal­la­tion was ​“easy-breezy,” and the simple oper­a­tional instruc­tions were described to her on day one. She hasn’t had any issues with it since.

“It’s not breaking down on me, I don’t have to call anyone to do this or that. I just turn it on, et voila!”