DEEP FREEZE FOR 8,000 IN NYCHA UNITS
WITH TEMPERATURES headed to the arctic zone, public housing tenants across the city will be shivering in bonechilling apartments — as they have for days.
By mid-day Wednesday, more than 8,000 NYCHA residents were without functional heat. Heating systems in five developments shut down completely, records show.
Some had lived in this frozen state for days. At Redfern Houses, a windwhipped development a block off the water in Far Rockaway, Queens, the heat has been off and on since last Thursday.
Early Wednesday frozen pipes shut the whole system down.
Jazmin Figueroa, 34, said she has turned on stove burners and clothed her four kids in multiple layers to stay warm.
“They go to bed freezing. I gotta put them in long johns,” she explained. “It’s not right, especially if you have kids. And the temperatures are dropping this weekend. This whole building doesn't have heat. We need this to get fixed soon. Our house is going to feel like zero degrees.”
Tenant Elaine Lopez, 47, wrapped her 4-year-old grandson, Tito Salvador, in a blanket and put a winter hat on him to keep him warm in the middle of the afternoon.
“I have called and complained. They say they are going to come and fix it, but they never come,” she said. “I put on him jogging pants, a sweater, whatever I can to keep him warm.”
In East New York, Brooklyn, 235 seniors huddled in the Reid Houses without heat since Tuesday. The same was true for the elderly at Harborview Terrace in Hell’s Kitchen. They say heat has been on and off for days and disappeared altogether Wednesday morning.
NYCHA spokeswoman Jasmine Blake said heat first went out at Redfern on Thursday, and NYCHA was able to restore it Friday. It was sporadic all weekend and Wednesday the whole system crashed.
Blake blamed the latest problem on frozen pipes and promised heat would be addressed at Redfern and all the other developments as soon as possible.
“With a ‘bomb cyclone’ bearing down, and temperatures likely to fall into the single digits, NYCHA must fix the heat immediately,” said Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan), whose district includes Harborview.