New York City Housing Authority Keeps “City Within a City” Safe and Informed with Everbridge

Everbridge, Inc. (NASDAQ: EVBG), the global leader in critical event management (CEM), today announced that the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the largest public housing authority in North America, expanded the use of the company’s mass notification platform to reach approximately 550,000 New Yorkers living in 316 public housing developments across NYC’s five boroughs. NYCHA recently expanded the program to include additional residents under Section 8, which allows private landlords to rent apartments to low-income tenants. The Housing Authority also uses the platform to communicate with its 14,000 employees.

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New York City Housing Authority Keeps “City Within a City” Safe and Informed with Everbridge (Graphic: Business Wire)

“NYCHA handles a population roughly the size of Atlanta,” said Rudy Murillo, Director of the Office of Emergency Management for the New York City Housing Authority. “With about half a million residents living in 167,000 apartments, we are a city within a city. The challenge we had was quickly reaching all of those residents in an emergency or if we needed to get important information to them right away. We had a system in place before Everbridge, but it took too long to get a message out, sometimes a few hours. With Everbridge, we got that time down to minutes.”

“Timing is critical,” continued Murillo. “We have a requirement that when there is an interruption of gas or electric service, we have to notify tenants within a certain period. And it may not be an entire building. It may be a few units; it may be one stair hall. With Everbridge, we can target our messaging to a specific population, stair hall, or a certain set of buildings. It’s not all or nothing.”

Another benefit of the platform, according to Murillo, is the ease of sending alerts in the right language to the right people. “We have four required languages – English, Spanish, Chinese, and Russian. In the past, we had to combine all of the languages in one message. Sometimes you had to sit there and listen to all of the messages in every language before hearing the one you understood. Now, with Everbridge, we send out messages only in the language preference specified by the household. It saves a lot of time and eliminates confusion for the residents.”