NYC Council Bills Would Harm Renters in Aim of Saving Them

“The perfect amount of fraud is not zero.”

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

In New York, local government tends to make things worse in an effort to make them perfect – a reality the real estate industry often finds itself facing.

The latest examples are bills pending in the city council to step up inspections of radiators and regulate the installation of household appliances.

The sponsors of the bill have good intentions. The radiator overhaul follows the tragic death in January of an 11-month-old boy who entered a bedroom of a Midwood apartment and was thrown by hot steam. Eight years earlier, two sisters, ages 1 and 2, were killed when steam leaked from a radiator in a Bronx apartment.

The city has systems in place to prevent such tragedies, and they have made deaths extremely rare, even though steam heats about 80 percent of residential buildings. This represents approximately 5 million people. After the Bronx accident, the director of the New York Presbyterian Medical Center burn center Weill Cornell told the New York Times that he had never heard of a steam heater causing death.

But the loss of the 11-month-old hit city council member Farah Louis hard. It was in her neighborhood and she wanted to make sure no steam heater killed another child. She introduced a bill requiring owners of multiple dwellings to have all steam radiators in homes with children under 6 years old inspected annually by a licensed master plumber.

No one could blame Louis for wanting to save children. But as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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

The perfect level of risk is not zero.

Louis claims his bill would make “significant progress” on building safety, but how much progress could it make on an issue that almost never happens?

The cost of an inspection by master plumbers of steam radiators in every apartment with young children would be enormous. Not only do they charge between $100 and $200 per hour, but it would likely take multiple visits to a building to gain access to each unit with a child.

Many landlords, particularly owners of rent-stabilized properties, should reduce their maintenance and improvement expenses to offset these expenses. Tenants would end up in a worse situation.

On a discussion forum earlier this year, steam heating experts criticized Louis’ bill. One cited a study that found that in an entire year for the entire United States, of 5,000 accidental deaths of children ages 1 to 14, none were caused by steam radiators.

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

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

As the New York Apartment Association testified at a Board hearing last month, “superintendents and other qualified building employees conduct these inspections, looking for lead paint hazards, smoke detectors and properly installed and operational gases, evidence of leaks and mold, and any other conditions. this should be resolved.

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

Another bill, Pierina Ana Sanchez’s Intro 429, requires a licensed plumber to install dishwashers, refrigerators with ice makers, garbage disposals, and gas stoves and dryers. These are systematically installed without problem by household appliance delivery people.

Requiring a licensed plumber would discourage landlords from ordering new appliances for tenants. The old ones that were broken would be repaired instead.

So who loses in this scenario? Tenants.

It’s hard to see how being left with old appliances could improve security.

The real deal We haven’t found any reports of people being injured by ice makers, but we’ll be keeping an eye out.

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