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Errol Louis: And one big area that you identify in the
report as well is that cost of energy, and I was very surprised to see how much it costs
to… and this is just what? This is fuel costs that have shot your expenses out of
control?
John Rhea: Yes, it’s principally, you know, heating
oil cost, but there’s electric cost as well. And we spend roughly, a little less than $600
million a year on energy expenses in public housing across the city, across the five boroughs.
And so we are looking at massive ways that we can retrofit our buildings, with higher
efficiency, boilers, instantaneous hot water heaters, insuring that the building envelopes
are secure, and that energy isn’t creeping out and being lost. That alone, will take
billions of dollars to make those investments, but those investments have a huge operating
payback in terms of our ongoing annual operating expenses and energy costs.
Errol Louis: Do the energy costs get passed on to the tenants?
John Rhea: To a certain extent yes, although not on a
unit-by-unit basis within a public housing resident’s rent is some component of quote-un-quote
their utility cost. The problem is individual apartments aren’t metered, so it’s not
as if Errol Louis pays more than John Rhea than there’s a reflection in our rent payments.