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NYC Council Bills Would Hurt Tenants in Attempt to Save Them

Online Niel November 14, 2024

“The perfect fraud value is not zero.”

That curious statement came from a money laundering expert on a Freakonomics Podcast. Why not zero? Because the draconian system needed to prevent all illegal transactions would also stop many legal ones. It would do more harm than good.

In New York City, local government tends to make things worse in an effort to make them perfect—a reality the real estate industry often faces.

The latest examples are bills pending in the City Council to speed up radiator inspections and to regulate electrical appliances.

The bill’s sponsors mean well. The radiator reform comes from tragic death in January of an 11-month-old boy who walked into a bedroom in a Midwood apartment and was blasted by hot steam. Eight years before, two sisters, aged 1 and 2, were KILLED when steam billowed from a radiator in a Bronx apartment.

The city has systems in place to prevent such tragedies and have made fatalities extremely rare, even as the steam heats up about 80 percent of residential buildings. That’s about 5 million people. After the Bronx accident, the director of the burn center at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center told the New York Times that he had never heard of a steam radiator causing death.

But the loss of the 11-month-old hit City Council member Farah Louis hard. She was in her district and wanted to make sure no steam radiator killed another child. It introduced a bill requiring owners of multiple dwellings to have a authorized master installer inspect all steam radiators in units with children under 6 years of age annually.

No one could fault Louis for wanting to save children. But as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Imagine if supermarkets and restaurants had to hire biologists to test all their food for a rare pathogen. By making food expensive, wiping out jobs, and diverting biologists from more pressing tasks, it would cause more deaths than it prevented.

The perfect amount of risk is not zero.

Louis claims her bill would make “significant progress” in building safety, but how much progress could it make on a problem that almost never happens?

The cost of having master plumbers inspect the steam radiators in every flat with small children would be enormous. Not only do they charge $100 to $200 per hourbut it would probably take several visits to a building to access each unit with a child.

Many landlords, especially rent-stabilized building owners, would have to cut back on maintenance and improvements to offset the expense. Tenants would end up worse off.

On a chat forum earlier this year, steam heating experts criticized Louis’ bill. One noted a study that found, in an entire year, for the entire US, of the 5,000 accidental deaths of children between the ages of 1 and 14, not one was caused by steam heaters.

Not all comments were hostile. Noting the deaths in 2016 and 2024, heating guru Ray Wohlfarth suggested inspections could have prevented them.

But here’s the thing: inspections are already required. Just not by master plumbers.

As the New York Apartment Association testified at a Board meeting last month, “Superintendents and other qualified building personnel conduct these inspections, looking for lead paint hazards, properly installed and functioning smoke and gas detectors, evidence of leaks and mold, and any other condition. that should be addressed.”

The council could just add steam radiators to the checklist and require potentially loose valves to be sent to a plumber.

Another bill, by Pierina Ana Sanchez Introduction 429requires a licensed plumber to install dishwashers, refrigerators with ice makers, garbage disposals, and gas stoves and dryers. These are usually installed without problems by those who deliver appliances.

Requiring a licensed installer would discourage landlords from ordering new appliances for tenants. The old ones that broke will be repaired instead.

So who loses in this scenario? Tenants.

It’s hard to see how being stuck with old devices would improve safety.

The real deal I haven’t found any information about people being injured by the ice machines, but we’ll keep an eye out.