Why New York City public housing is testing electric stoves
New York City public housing apartments have had 79 gas service disruptions across more than 300 developments, some lasting months with no way to cook at all, according to City Limits reporting on the New York City Housing Authority. Aging gas pipes running through more than 2,400 of its buildings are the cause. Rather than dig up that plumbing, the housing authority is testing electric stoves that skip gas entirely, an induction model that heats a pan directly with a magnetic field. It runs on a standard 120 volt, 20 amp wall outlet, the kind already in most kitchens, with no major electrical upgrade needed.
What the 32 million dollar plan actually pays for
The New York Power Authority board approved 32 million dollars in short term financing for the project in July 2024. That loan rests on a 30.8 million dollar commitment from the housing authority to buy more stoves later if the current test succeeds, plus 1.2 million dollars from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority to pay for designing the stove and running the pilot itself. None of the 32 million dollars is a payment to a resident. It pays a manufacturer to build the machine and pays the agencies to test it.
How big the pilot is, against how big public housing is
The pilot now underway put the stove, built by Copper, a manufacturer based in Berkeley, California, into 100 apartments starting this month, November 2025. If the pilot succeeds, the agencies plan to order 10,000 of the stoves.
We can help these buildings avoid a lot of infrastructure cost.
Sam Calisch, chief executive of Copper, the company building the stove. Source 4.
The housing authority runs 177,569 apartments in 2,411 buildings across 335 developments, so even the 10,000 stove goal would reach a small share of it, and the 100 apartment test underway now is smaller still.
This axis runs in tens of thousands. The 100 apartments in the pilot now are too few to show as a bar on it.
Show the numbers
| Apartments in the housing authority | 177,569 |
| Full rollout goal if the pilot succeeds | 10,000 |
| Apartments in the pilot now | 100 |
The 2023 contract that got this programme moving
The power authority and the city opened this work to manufacturers in November 2023, asking for prototypes within 10 months of signing a contract, a 100 unit demonstration batch within 18 months, and a full production line within 24 months. Twelve other housing agencies, representing more than 300,000 housing units outside New York City, signed on to support the same push.
The 24 month full production figure is from source 2. The other 2 milestones are from source 3.
Show the numbers
| Prototypes due | 10 |
| 100 unit batch due | 18 |
| Full production window | 24 |
What an earlier Bronx test found, and why no resident can request one yet
Before this contract, the housing authority already ran a smaller test. In 2022, it fitted induction stoves into 10 of the 96 apartments at 1471 Watson Avenue in the Bronx, keeping 10 more on gas as a comparison, over 6 months.
I'm in love already. That's dope.
Shavon Marino, a resident who took part in an earlier 2022 induction stove pilot at a different Bronx building, not the current 100 apartment programme. Source 5.
That building is not one of the 100 apartments in the current pilot, and the agencies have not yet named which buildings will get the new stoves, so no resident of the 177,569 public housing apartments in the city can request one yet.