Elmhurst Building’s Complaint Calls Are a Mystery to Its Residents
NEW YORK, NY — Angela Torres, with her fully loaded fold-up utility cart, parked in front of her building to catch up with some long-time neighbors after an errand run. She’s lived at 89–21 Elmhurst Ave. in Queens, NY for exactly 41 years, which she could immediately recall because she gave birth to her now 40-year-old daughter only one year after moving in.
The multi-family complex was built in 1950 and has 235 residential units. As temperatures finally drop in New York City, a relatively older building naturally brings concerns about heat and hot water, especially if there’s a track record of outages like there is at Torres’ building. However, numbers from last winter show an alarmingly abnormal volume of 311 calls. There were three times the number of heat and hot water complaints in the Queens building, topping the list with 3,174 complaints, than that of the second highest building in Brooklyn with 1,026 complaints
Localize.city, a home search platform whose objective is for tenants to learn the truth about buildings before moving in, published a report late last week by Aaron Ghitelman called, “Cold Showers and Broken Radiators.” The report tracked heat and hot water complaints made to the New York 311 hotline over the past 12 months across all five boroughs, which make up by far the most frequently received calls each year.
These numbers alone don’t tell the whole story, however, and many residents claim they’ve never had any issues regarding heat or hot water.
“I love it,” Torres said. “I’m very happy here with my neighbors and I don’t have a problem.”
Other long time residents were upset about the negative perception the disportionately high volume of calls has created of their homes. Torres’ friend, Maylen Pigmental, has resided in the building for a little over three decades, and also says she’s never had any heat related issues. “I don’t know who is doing this type of thing but they are damaging the whole building,” said Pigmental.
Many floated the same theories on why there was such a large number of calls made to 311 over the last year. Roquelina Diaz has also lived in the building for three decades and believes it’s the same person calling each time under a different name.
The superintendent, Oscar Zargoza, echoed Diaz’s sentiment. Even stranger, Zargoza claimed over the phone that this individual is using the names of people who work for the building, such as the secretary of the property management company.
“One day they even did it under my name,” Zargoza said.
Byron Loja feels slightly different about the building conditions, though. In his early 20s, he’s spent nearly half of his life in the building, and can vividly remember winters where the heat would spontaneously go out for days at a time.
When asked if the volume of 311 calls was representative of his experience, he said, “I don’t know about thousands of times but definitely a couple of times, it’s something you just kind of grow up with.”
Loja also struggled to evaluate whether last winter’s numbers correlated with an explosion of legitimate complaints or if the number of outages had remained fairly consistent over the decade he’s lived there. He explained, “If you grow up knowing that there’s going to be times where you don’t have heat, then you can’t really say this isn’t normal because for you it’s more like the norm.”
While the Localize.city report may not paint a clear picture of 89–21 Elmhurst Ave., it does bring attention to one of the biggest problems New York City tenants will continue to face. According to their predictive AI algorithm, they believe at least 8,400 buildings are at risk of heat and hot water outages this coming winter.
Ultimately, Ghitelman had mixed reactions to the findings in his report. “I think as a New Yorker, the sheer magnitude was a bit surprising,” he said. But on the other hand, he explained, “it’s not that surprising, it’s almost depressing how not surprising it is.”
