“The perfect amount of fraud is not zero.”
That curious statement came from an expert on money laundering on a Freakonomics podcast. Why not zero? Because the draconian system needed to prevent all illegal transactions would also stop many legal ones. It would do more harm than good.
In New York City, local government tends to make things worse in an effort to make them perfect — a reality which the real estate industry often finds itself fighting.
The latest examples are bills pending in the City Council to ramp up radiator inspections and regulate appliance installations.
The bill sponsors mean well. The radiator reform stems from the tragic death in January of an 11-month-old boy who wandered into a bedroom in a Midwood apartment and was blasted by hot steam. Eight years before, two sisters, ages 1 and 2, were killed when steam shot out of 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. That’s about 5 million people. After the Bronx accident, the director of the burn center at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center told the New York Times he had never heard of a steam radiator causing a death.
But the loss of the 11-month-old hit City Council member Farah Louis hard. It was in her district and she wanted to ensure no steam radiator kills another child. She introduced a bill requiring owners of multiple dwellings to have a licensed master plumber annually inspect all steam radiators in units with children under 6.
No one could fault 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 of their food for a rare pathogen. By making food expensive, wiping out jobs and diverting biologists from more pressing duties, it would cause more deaths than it prevented.
The perfect amount of risk is not zero.
Louis claims her bill would make “significant progress” in building safety, but how much progress could it make on a problem that almost never happens?
The cost of having master plumbers inspect steam radiators in every apartment with small children would be enormous. Not only do they charge $100 to $200 an hour, but it would likely take several visits to a building to get access to every unit with a kid.
Many landlords, especially owners of rent-stabilized buildings, would have to cut back on maintenance and improvements to offset the expense. Tenants would end up worse off.
On a chat board earlier this year, steam-heating experts panned Louis’ bill. One noted a study that found in an entire year for the entire U.S., of the 5,000 accidental deaths of children ages 1 to 14, not a single one was caused by steam radiators.
Not all comments were hostile. Noting the deaths in 2016 and 2024, heating system guru Ray Wohlfarth suggested that inspections could have prevented them.
But here’s the thing: Inspections are already required. Just not by master plumbers.
As the New York Apartment Association testified at a Council hearing last month, “Superintendents and other qualified building staff perform these inspections, looking for lead paint hazards, properly installed and operational smoke and gas detectors, evidence of leaks and mold, and any other condition that should be addressed.”
The Council could just add steam radiators to the checklist and require that potentially loose valves be referred to a plumber.
Another bill, Pierina Ana Sanchez’s Intro 429, requires a licensed plumber to install dishwashers, refrigerators with icemakers, garbage disposers, and gas stoves and dryers. These are routinely installed without issue by appliance delivery people.
Requiring a licensed plumber would discourage landlords from ordering new appliances for tenants. Old ones that broke would be repaired instead.
So who loses in that scenario? Tenants.
It’s hard to see how being stuck with old appliances would enhance safety.
The Real Deal could find no reports of people being injured by icemakers, but we will keep an eye out.
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