More than 700 homes at Beach 41st Street Houses in Rockaway will switch to electric heating and cooling, which officials say will reduce pollution and offer more reliable service than NYCHA’s aging, fossil fuel-powered boilers. Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the project Wednesday, his first public housing-related press conference since taking office.
More than 700 homes at the Beach 41st Street Houses in Rockaway will switch to electric heating and cooling systems in the next two years—the third public housing development in the city slated to make the change, which officials say will reduce pollution and offer more reliable service than NYCHA’s aging, fossil fuel-powered boilers.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the $38.4 million project at the Queens housing complex on Wednesday—where, ironically, all five buildings were without heat and hot water because of a leak in the existing steam heating system during an unusually cold stretch of weather.
“Residents here at Beach 41st Houses know the pain of a heat outage all too well,” Mamdani said.
All 712 units at the campus will receive custom-designed heat pumps that will allow tenants to control the temperatures in their own apartments for the first time. It follows a pilot program last year that installed the eco-friendly devices in a building at the Woodside Houses, where they got positive reviews from residents and cut down on energy costs, officials said.
“Heat pumps are very widely used across the globe. They are very reliable when they are well maintained,” said Louise Yeung, the city’s chief climate officer. “The pilot at Woodside Houses shows that they had no issues performing in cold weather.”
In addition to Beach 41st Street Houses, NYCHA plans to install heat pumps at the remainder of the Woodside Houses this summer, and 1,600 apartments at the Bay View Houses will start getting them this spring as part of a larger renovation project funded through the Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) program.
The Housing Authority aims to make the switch to electric at 30,000 apartments in total over the coming years. It’s part of a larger city effort to decarbonize buildings, which account for about 70 percent of the five boroughs’ greenhouse gas emissions.
Wednesday’s announcement marked Mamdani’s first NYCHA-related press conference since taking office last month, where he offered some detail into how his administration might approach managing the country’s largest public housing system.
“I understand NYCHA residents, and New Yorkers at large, for whom politics has been nothing to find faith in,” Mamdani told reporters. His previous district in the State Assembly included the sprawling Queensbridge Houses, where he said he heard frequently from residents about heat outages or broken elevators.
announcement. (Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)
NYCHA faces a nearly $80 billion repair hole, the result of decades of government underfunding and dysfunctional management.
“There is an immense federal responsibility as it pertains to NYCHA, that the $80 billion in capital needs are ones that the federal government should be playing a pivotal role in meeting,” the mayor said. But lawmakers in Washington are unlikely to provide that support, he acknowledged.
“We know that we cannot, in good conscience, expect that assistance to be coming this year or the next year; it has not come for many years,” Mamdani said. “And so what that requires us to do is look at every avenue we have as a city and as a state to start to confront this ourselves.”
That includes NYCHA being more transparent with residents, who are often left in the dark about things like how long a repair project will take, he said. It also includes making “the kinds of investments that can do more than just one thing.”
“And what I mean by that is: these heat pumps. They are heat pumps that save money. They are heat pumps that have a positive impact on our climate. They are also heat pumps that have a positive impact on our quality of life,” Mamdani said.
The heat pump project stems from a challenge NYCHA launched in 2021, asking appliance manufacturers to design a model that could be easily installed through an existing window without costly electrical upgrades. A similar initiative is underway to bring electric stoves to NYCHA kitchens. And the mini-fridge, Mamdani noted, was invented in another contest NYCHA held in the late 90s asking companies to create an efficient but small refrigerator that could work in its apartments.
“That is technological innovation that was a result of NYCHA’s own needs,” the mayor said. “We can bring that era back to make this a place … where we develop new answers to old problems. That’s what we have to do.”
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