100s of Lower East Siders Stranded Without Gas for 40 Days — and Counting

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — Jacqueline Mitchell, a middle-aged resident of 131 Broome St. on the Lower East Side, hasn't had gas for her stove for 40 days. Her blood pressure is through the roof, she says, and her right foot sometimes swells so painfully that she can't leave her house. When the weather is cold, going outside only makes her foot worse.

Without gas, Mitchell has been forced to eat at take-out restaurants — which she can hardly afford, and which serve salty meals that raise her blood pressure. When the management of her building gave her a hotplate to use instead, she says, it caught on fire and burned her the first time she used it.

"Everything I eat is on the street, or something that is really not healthy for me," Mitchell said. "I've been eating stuff from a Chinese restaurant, A1 pizzeria... . It's really taking a toll on me."

Mitchell's doctor is trying to get her to check into a hospital, she told Patch — but she doesn't want to be confined to a hospital bed.

Like Mitchell, hundreds of tenants of 131 Broome St. — a Section 8 housing complex that's part of the Grand Street Guild in the Lower East Side, and is co-owned by the city and the Archdiocese of New York — haven't had gas for over a month. They're hungry and frustrated, the building's tenants association told Patch. Five of them have suffered burns from their temporary hotplates. Many of the building's residents are senior citizens, shut-ins, people with chronic health problems and families with several small children — people for whom 40 days without gas is potentially life threatening.

Sandra Strother, vice president of the Grand Street Guild Residents Association and a tenant at 131 Broome St., first smelled gas in her building in March, she told Patch. She called the fire department, and ConEd shut down the gas pipe that led to the lobby — effectively shutting off the building's laundry machines for six months.

When ConEd workers returned on Sept. 2 to re-open the gas line, Strother said, they noticed other pipes were leaking, so they shut gas to the entire building.

"This building could've blown up at any time, and it didn't, by the grace of God," Strother said. "One lit cigarette would've blown this place sky-high at any time."

In the weeks since Sept. 2, plumbers have fixed three of nine pipes in the building, Strother said. They've been systematically going into apartments one-by-one — moving the stove away from the wall, breaking a hole through the wall, then repairing the glue that holds the pipes together, she said.

Some tenants lucky enough to have had their gas lines repaired are offering food and kitchen access to their neighbors. But at this point, there are twice as many tenants without gas than with — and at the current rate of repairs, multiple tenants told Patch they don't expect to have gas for at least another month.

"It's a struggle just to live for me," Mitchell said. "It's really past the B.S. point now. I would understand three or four days, but we're going on more than a month. We're suffering physically, emotionally. My hands are killing me because of the arthritis. We didn't even really have heat last night."

Multiple requests for comment from Grand Street Guild Apartments officials and the 131 Broome building's individual management company, Wavecrest Management, were not returned by press time.

Patch also reached out to ConEd for comment. We'll update this post if/when anyone gets back to us.

Last week, representatives from the city's Human Resources Administration spoke with tenants about emergency food options during the gas blackout, Strother said. However, city officials mentioned programs that many senior citizens and shut-ins can't access, and said they didn't have enough staff members to deliver food to the building, according to Strother.

Meals on Wheels, the federally funded senior food program, has stopped by three times in 40 days to feed tenants, but their resources are running thin, Strother said.

"We don't have enough food," Strother said. "It's really been hard. Hard times."

Many of the tenants have diabetes and other health problems that require them to cook specific meals, and many of their doctors have recommended they cook using an oven, Strother said.

"There are many of us, like me, our sugar is real bad, real high," Elsie Rivera, who lives on the 25th floor, told Patch. "We all cook through the oven. Ever since [the gas was shut off], my sugar is so sky-high."

"We have to cook TV dinners, which you have to use the microwave for," Rivera said. "It has chemicals. I don't like to use the microwave."

Rivera's hotplate, given to her by management, sparked in her face when she tried to use it, she said. "It went pss! pss! pss! in my face, and that was it," she said.