Council members Torres, Gibson team up for heat sensor legislation

Newly proposed legislation would require city landlords with the highest number of heat and hot water violations to install heat sensors in their units.

News 12 Staff

Oct 11, 2019, 9:04 PM

Updated 1,669 days ago

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Newly proposed legislation would require city landlords with the highest number of heat and hot water violations to install heat sensors in their units.
Council members Ritchie Torres and Vanessa Gibson teamed up to introduce the legislation that would force landlords who repeatedly leave tenants without heat and hot water to put a device called Heat Seek in their tenants' apartments. The device reads the temperature inside the apartment every hour. The device is said to be accurate within one-degree Fahrenheit.
The information collected from the device would be available on the Heat Seek app for tenants to keep track of.
"Incorporating legislation and mandating the installation of heat sensors will provide not only more accountability for landlords that need to be held responsible, but it will also give tenants and residents reassurance that we have heard their cry," said Gibson.
According to data collected by Localize.city, the Bronx saw the most calls to 311 for heat and hot water issues. They say there were more than 70,000 complaints from September 2018 to August of this year.
Both council members tell News 12 they are hoping to pass the legislation next month.


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