Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced a $38.4 million investment to install electric heat pumps at NYCHA’s Beach 41st Street Houses development in Edgemere as part of efforts to bring reliable heating to NYCHA tenants across the city.
Mamdani said the eco-friendly electric heat pumps, which were first installed at Woodside Houses in 2023, would bring reliable heat to all 712 units at the Beach 41st Street development.
The new pumps will replace traditional pumps powered by natural gas, which Mamdani said would provide more reliable, affordable and environmentally-friendly heat for NYCHA residents. He added that it would take two years to install the new pumps at all 712 units in the development.
Citing data from the Woodside Houses pilot program, Mamdani said the new electric pumps had yielded 87% in energy savings while also allowing residents to heat their apartments in winter and prevent their homes from overheating in summer. The pumps will also improve hot water reliability and allow residents to control temperatures in their homes, he said.
On the other hand, traditional pumps powered by natural gas often fail to properly heat apartments on cold days but create sweltering conditions in the summer, according to the mayor’s office.
The mayor also announced that the pumps will be installed in 10,000 NYCHA apartments by 2030, with plans to eventually equip all 177,000 NYCHA apartments with electric pumps. Mamdani did not have an estimate for how much such a project would cost.
However, he said the pumps would offset the risk of fossil fuel supplies being disrupted, noting that ice flows have boxed out ships carrying essential fuel to millions of apartments in the city. Only ice-breaking ships supplied by the Coast Guard allowed fuel to reach the city.
In the short term, the city must stand ready to react to any heating issue that arises in NYCHA developments while the new pumps are being installed, Mamdani told QNS.
“The short term solution is the city’s responsiveness to any issues that are identified,” Mamdani said. “However, we know that there has to be the development of a medium and a long-term strategy, because far too long we see the same issues year after year.”
Mamdani said the new pumps were especially urgent at the Beach 41st Street NYCHA development, noting that the complex’s existing steam system is experiencing a leak.
“Residents here at Beach 41st Houses know the pain of a heat outage all to well,” he said. “They deserve a heating and a cooling system they can depend on during the months of extreme weather. The outdated infrastructure in these buildings has outlived its useful life.”
The mayor joined Council Member Selvena Brooks-Powers, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, NYCHA CEO Lisa Bova-Hiatt, Deputy Mayor Leila Bozorg and the city’s Chief Climate Officer Louise Yeung at the Edgemere development to make the announcement Wednesday morning.
Yeung said the Far Rockaway community is often last neighborhood in the city to receive climate upgrades despite being on the frontline of environmental disasters like Superstorm Sandy. She said the climate crisis required “creative solutions” to build a “just and equitable” climate transition.
Bova-Hiatt, meanwhile, said the “cutting-edge heat pumps” would bring clean heat to all residents at the Edgemere development.
“These cutting-edge heat pumps will not only provide clean, reliable heat during the winter, but cooling during the summer months as well,” Bova-Hiatt said.
Richards said the $38 million investment marked recognition of one of the most resilient communities in the city, stating that the Far Rockaway community often feels “overlooked.”
“Today is really a good day to ensure that our historically most marginalized communities who often feel overlooked and disinvested in can see that their city is saying, ‘You deserve to be invested in no matter your socioeconomic status or your zip code,'” Richards said.
Brooks-Powers said residents at the NYCHA development had for “too long” lived with aging systems that failed to properly heat apartments in winter and cool homes in the summer. She added that the issue went far beyond an inconvenience and presented real health impacts.
“For too long, too many NYCHA residents in Far Rockaway have lived with aging systems that don’t meet the basic needs,” Brooks-Powers said. “It’s not a minor inconvenience. It affects health, stability and peace of mind. Families shouldn’t have to plan their lives around broken infrastructure.”
Mamdani also outlined ambitions to “bring down scaffolding” across NYCHA developments during an interview with QNS. He said removing scaffolding that has long been fixed to the sides of developments across the city is one of his main priorities to improve quality of life for NYCHA residents.
Addressing the ongoing cold snap, which entered its 13th day on Wednesday, the mayor said the city remains in a 24/7 enhanced Code Blue, with temperatures set to plummet once more at the weekend.
“These are dangerous, life-threatening conditions,” Mamdani said. “And as long as temperatures remain this low, the risk of fatal exposure endures.”
A total of 17 people have died from exposure since the cold snap began almost two weeks ago.
Mamdani said the ongoing cold snap provides an “urgent reminder” as to why the electric heat pumps are needed in NYCHA developments.
Richards, meanwhile, said the city had been one of the worst landlords in New York in recent years and said both the city and state must come up with long-term solutions for NYCHA residents amid federal funding threats from the Trump Administration. At present, Richards said, NYCHA residents can often see their own breath in their apartments during the winter, with many turning to space heaters or ovens to provide warmth, which create significant fire hazards.
“Regardless of whether or not we’re in a historic cold snap like we are now, families deserve to be warm in the winter. No one should ever have to see their breath in their apartments,” Richards said.
The installation is part of the “Clean Heat for All” initiative launched by NYCHA in 2021 alongside the New York Power Authority and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which challenged HVAC and appliance manufacturers to develop a heat pump model that could be easily installed through an existing window with little to no electrical upgrades.
Midea and Gradient eventually won contracts to develop 30,000 pumps for NYCHA homes, with NYCHA already purchasing more than 5,000 pumps.
