COLD FACTS

NYCHA tenants: No heat

It’s not even winter, but public-housing residents are already being left out in the cold.

Records show that 35,475 tenants of the New York City Housing Authority have endured stretches without heat or hot water since Oct. 18, according to the Legal Aid Society.

The heating-system failures come in the wake of assurances by city officials that improvements have been made since last winter’s crisis — when more than 320,000 tenants lost heat or hot water.

“NYCHA isn’t ready for the heating season . . . as we all know and see,” Daniel Barber, chair of the Citywide Council of Presidents, which represents NYCHA tenants, testified at a City Council hearing Wednesday.

“We were here in this same position . . . last year, and the only difference is the year.”

NYCHA brass insisted the number of tenants impacted by outages since the heating season began on Oct. 1 is lower than online records show because of data duplications and outages that were preplanned for repairs.

They counted 70 outages for heat and 161 for hot water at 22 developments, but weren’t able to say how many residents have been impacted to date.

When pressed about the online data, however, NYCHA officials gave such inconsistent answers that councilmembers said they lost confi- dence in the agency’s ability to prevent another crisis.

“We are talking about heat and hot water for human beings,” Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer (D-Queens) said. “This is basic human services, basic human decency, and you have not had the answers or you’ve been confused about your own answers.”

The officials responded that the online system is a new attempt at transparency that’s still being perfected.

Natalia Singh, 25, a resident of the Pink Houses in East New York, said she regularly has to boil water to bathe her 5year-old daughter.

“It’s on and off,” she said of the hot water. “Ever since I moved in, there have been outages.”