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Report: One fourth of rental listings are in buildings with a heat or hot water complaint

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By Austin Havens-Bowen  |
October 8, 2019 - 1:00PM
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A report from Localize.city finds Crown Heights and Harlem are the neighborhoods with the most buildings with heat and hot water complaints.

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If you’re looking for a new place to rent in New York City, now that the weather is cooling down, it’s a good idea to check out what kind of complaints any prospective building may have received about a lack of heat.

That’s because for almost a quarter of NYC rentals on the market as of September 22nd, there was at least one heat or hot water complaint in the building in the last year, according to a new report from Localize.city, a real estate site you can use to track building complaints. 

Over the last 12 months, a total of 221,858 heat-related complaints from 32,436 unique addresses were called in to 311. Based on Localize.city’s predictive AI algorithm, over 8,400 of these buildings are at risk of having these issues again. 

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“Not having heat or hot water is not only a hardship but also illegal,” says Nir Gonen, a data scientist at Localize.city. “Heat and hot water are basic needs, and not having heat and hot water is the single most frequent housing-related complaints made to 311.”

See if your neighborhood or your building make Localize.city’s list of places with the most heat complaints.

All five boroughs were found to have heat and hot water complaints with the Bronx and Brooklyn topping the list, with 73,607 and 67,554 complaints, respectively.

Cold indoor temperatures have been linked to increased blood pressure, asthma symptoms, and even mental health issues.

 

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Austin Havens-Bowen

Staff Writer

Staff writer Austin Havens-Bowen covers the rental market and answers renters' questions in a column called Realty Bites. He previously reported on local news for the Queens Ledger and The Hunts Point Express in the Bronx. He graduated from Hunter College with a BA in media studies. He rents a one-bedroom apartment in Astoria with his boyfriend and their two cats.

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