This week: what the city promises

In the news

Ambulances took longer. Ambulances took an average of 13:09 to reach life-threatening emergencies in the fiscal year to June, timed from the 911 call, according to the city's Mayor's Management Report. Last November, the chief of the Fire Department's Emergency Medical Service told the City Council that staffing shortages were costing it about 10 in-service ambulance units a day. EMS1, October 7

Heat season began, with a new inspection rule. The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development, HPD, says it will now attempt to inspect every apartment that files a named heat or hot water complaint, rather than grouping a building's complaints and clearing them together. It says it has 321 inspectors, 11% more than in 2021. City Limits, October 6

The rent freeze took effect. On October 1, the judge hearing the landlords' lawsuit had declined to halt it or carry over last year's increases, and tenants were signing renewals at frozen rents. What happens to those leases if the decision goes back to the board is unsettled, and the report expected the case to take several more months if the losing side appeals. The Real Deal, October 1

What the numbers say

So is New York keeping its promises? The rent freeze is in force for the leases it covers, while a court case runs. The other two are under strain: ambulances are slower than in any year since 1988, and last winter brought far more no-heat complaints than its cold would predict. The common thread is delivery: a freeze arrives with the lease, but an ambulance needs a free crew, and heat needs a landlord who supplies it and an inspector who checks. There's a lot of information going around about all three, so as always, here are the numbers on who they actually reach.

Ambulance: the Mayor's Management Report series, fiscal 1996 to 2026, in our The ambulance is slower article. Heat and rent: HPD's complaint file and the city's Housing and Vacancy Survey, in our Not just the cold and Who gets the rent freeze articles.

Start with the ambulance. The 13:09 in the news is the city's end-to-end figure, timed from the 911 call. In our article The ambulance is slower (October 7), we took the city's longer-running measure, which starts once the call is taken and an ambulance job is created: 10:32 in fiscal 2026, the slowest year since 1988. Almost none of the rise was on the phone. In the FDNY's dispatch records, about one in eight of those calls began at a lower priority and was upgraded later; for calls life-threatening from the start, the rise was about a minute, most of it after an ambulance was assigned. Meanwhile in-service hours, a city measure that now also counts paramedic units, fell 5.4% while calls fell slightly, and the share of life-threatening calls held because no unit could be assigned at once rose by two thirds, to 11.5%. More often, no ambulance was free.

Heat is a promise the law asks landlords to keep, with the city checking. Our article Not just the cold (October 9) found that last winter's record of about 305,000 no-heat complaints was 48% higher than its weather alone would predict at the pre-pandemic rate, and that inspectors closed more than twice as many complaints with a new heat violation as before the pandemic. Complaints count reports, not cold apartments, but the inspectors' findings point the same way. Now inspectors must try to see every apartment whose tenant files a named complaint. It is HPD's rule, though, and NYCHA asks its tenants to report to it instead. In the winter of 2021-22, 39% of public-housing households that lived there reported a heating breakdown of six hours or more, while last winter just 12 no-heat complaints to HPD were on tax lots in NYCHA's address file, a list that leaves out most developments now under private management. They are different measures, but together they show the rule reaches the tenants who call HPD.

The rent freeze needs no crew. As we saw in our Who gets the rent freeze article (October 5), its reach is set by the calendar. Carrying the 2023 survey's lease dates forward, about four in five of the city's 960,700 stabilized households renew while it lasts (77% to 81%, by our model), and about one in five, midway through a two-year lease, waits for next June's order; new tenants of vacant stabilized apartments are covered too. The freeze avoids an increase rather than cutting rent. Against last year's increases repeated, a renewing household typically avoids about $600 a year at 2023 rents, about 4% of 2022 income for households under $25,000 with any income, though rental assistance can absorb part of that for the poorest. Whether it holds is now up to a judge.

Put simply, the three promises differ in what it takes to deliver them. The rent freeze arrives with the lease, while the court case runs. An ambulance and a warm apartment depend on crews, landlords and inspectors, and the city's own records show ambulances slower than in any year since 1988 and no-heat complaints and heat violations well above the winters before the pandemic. So is New York keeping its promises? The one written into an order, for now. The other two are under strain. A promise is only as good as what delivers it.

Read more

Every SparkyData number above comes from one of our articles, where you can check the source, the method and the code. The figures in the news section belong to the outlets and agencies we link.

Questions or comments? Write to us at [email protected], or just reply to this email.

All articles · RSS