NY Post | Thursday, February 5, 2026 
Tens of thousands of New Yorkers left without heat as temperatures drop to 4° — and tenants blast Mamdani for failing to act

New Yorkers placed a staggering 80,000 calls to 311 reporting a lack of residential heat and hot water in January 2026 — the highest monthly total on record — as private and public housing tenants told The Post they were trapped in unlivable conditions and accused Mayor Zohran Mamdani of failing to act. The complaints poured in amid a brutal deep freeze, with tenants across the city reporting days without heat, ice-cold showers and overnight shut-offs as temperatures plunged into the teens. Alex Hughes, a Williamsburg tenant, said the situation in his building has deteriorated so much that he recently packed his bags and moved into a hotel. “We’ve had over 40 days of no hot water over the last 11 months. And we’re now on day eight or nine straight of no hot water,” Hughes told The Post. “I had to walk 15 minutes in the snow and ice to a friend’s house so I could shower.” In Astoria, Nicole Pavez, 31, a city planner for NYC, said the current cold snap has pushed her building’s already unreliable heating system into crisis mode, forcing her to bundle up indoors and dress her dog in sweaters to keep him warm. “For the last week, the heat has been going out almost every night,” Pavez told The Post. “You wake up in the middle of the night freezing, and there’s nothing you can do except layer up and wait.” Public housing tenants have also been frozen in their homes, with...Read more