Mayor de Blasio makes $200M vow to fix boilers for freezing NYCHA tenants with project to start in July

Keep your shirts on, freezing NYCHA tenants — and your coats, hats and blankets, too.

Help and heat are on the way. Just don’t expect either of them until July.

Mayor de Blasio promised Wednesday to rescue thousands of public housing tenants who have weathered this brutal winter in apartments with radiators that feel more like ice trays.

The mayor announced a commitment of $200 million to upgrade aging boilers or install new ones in 20 NYCHA developments.

But that won’t begin until the start of the next fiscal year — which begins July 1, when summer is in full swing and people are beating the heat with backyard barbecues. And air conditioning.

As for completion, officials don’t expect the job to be done until 2022 — after de Blasio has left City Hall.

But try telling that to Christina Martinez, who is hot under the collar about the ice locker she calls an apartment in East Harlem.

“It’s not really needed in July,” said Martinez, 23, who lives in the city’s Taft Houses. “Heat is needed now.

“I hope they have some other stuff set in motion for that time-being because another winter like this is just uncalled for,” she said. “It’s hard on the little kids that are living here as well.”

Martinez said she hasn’t been able to sit on her living room couch without a blanket, or walk to the bathroom without wearing a pair of socks.

“I have a 4-year-old in there, and I had to make sure she was covered up throughout the night,” Martinez said. “She was getting sick a lot, a lot of coughs and runny noses.”

Crystal Clayborn is also fuming.

“Why wait six months from now when the problem has been going on for so many years?” an incredulous Clayborn, 33, asked.

“We don’t need the heat in the summer.”

Clayborn has a 6-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter and she’s concerned about their health.

“On a nice day, that’s when they want to send the heat up the most,” she said. “But when it’s freezing cold, that’s when the heat is sporadic. When you need the heat the most, it’s not there.”

De Blasio’s $200 million upgrade is a fraction of the nearly $2 billion NYCHA says it needs to repair and replace all of its ancient boilers, including dozens that notoriously break down again, and again. The mayor’s announcement came on a day that started out at 19 degrees, and officials and tenants questioned why the cavalry won’t be arriving until after winter’s come and gone.

“I’m of course happy to see more money for NYCHA,” said Council Speaker Corey Johnson. “At the same time, I have concerns that the reports say that it could take until 2022 for some of these heating systems and boilers to be up and running and ready, which is far too long.”

“Tenants at these developments that have been identified don’t have four winters to wait to get fixed boilers,” he noted.

The city can, if it chooses, speed up the process by awarding heating contracts on an emergency basis. It did just that two weeks ago when the mayor dedicated $13 million to NYCHA for mobile boilers, sealing 9,600 windows and adding repair staff.

In that same announcement de Blasio promised that before next winter, three developments with chronic heat issues will get new gas-fired units: Pelham Parkway and Patterson Houses in the Bronx and Independence Towers in Brooklyn.

But many more developments endure what NYCHA calls “chronic outages,” including 10 of the 20 developments targeted for the $200 million down the line.

“It’s absolutely unacceptable that we have to face these issues because of underfunding,” said Jasmine Blake, NYCHA spokeswoman. “So we prioritize.”

She noted that NYCHA will also get $100 million to upgrade heat systems at 17 developments damaged by Hurricane Sandy from the Federal Emergency Management Administration and $40 million this year for heating improvements from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The scope of NYCHA’s heating problems became crystal clear in the days before and after the New Year when tenants at more than 50 developments endured heat outages for days at a time. Pipes froze, boilers failed and NYCHA workers were closing requests for repairs before checking to see if apartments had regained heat.

The NYCHA official in charge of boilers told The News his crews lacked money for repairs and struggled to stretch existing resources by re-using old parts.

Blake said days into the big freeze, City Hall approached NYCHA and asked what was needed. The agency requested an unspecified amount in emergency funding and got the $13 million quick fix.

“I’m sure we asked for more,” she said, without providing a specific dollar figure.

De Blasio announced his $200 million plan days before his team faces questions in front of the City Council’s oversight committee. Speaker Johnson said the Council will turn up the heat Tuesday with questions focusing on whether $200 million from City Hall is the best approach.

“Is it the appropriate amount of money? Is it going to the right developments? What’s the timeline on procurements and actually getting repairs done? All those questions will be asked,” he said.

Councilman Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx) praised the $200 million commitment, but argued that NYCHA’s aging infrastructure is a surprise to no one. Resources, he said, should have come earlier.

“If these investments or these plans had been put in place a year ago, or two years ago, or three years ago, or four years, we would have made real progress,” he said. “The fact that the winters are brutally cold is hardly an unforeseeable event.”

Though not providing heat, NYCHA and its chairwoman have taken a lot lately on other issues — particularly a lead paint fiasco uncovered by The News.

Agency chief Shola Olatoye has been embroiled in controversy for months since it emerged that she falsely certified that lead paint inspections had been completed when they had not been done in years. Several city officials, Torres included, have called for the mayor to replace her — but de Blasio has stuck by her side.

With Erin Durkin, Leonard Greene