Hundreds Without Heat In NYCHA Housing As City Freezes

NEW YORK CITY — Jonathan Vega swaddled his 3-week-old granddaughter in a "whole bunch of onesies" and a fleece blanket in hopes of keeping her warm as temperatures plummeted and the heating failed in his NYCHA building for the second day in a row.

"She’s very vulnerable," said Vega, a 43-year-old electrician. "Something needs to be done. "

Vega is among more than 430 Soundview Houses residents in The Bronx who lost heat and hot water Thursday morning when the wind chill registered at 2 below zero, NYCHA records and forecasts show.

Soundview's Building 11 at 1680 Randall Ave. had 236 residents without heat or hot water and Building 12 at 1711 Lacombe Ave. had 201 as of 4 a.m. Thursday, NYCHA records show.

Vega thinks the situation is worst in his $1778-a-month apartment because he lives above Building 11's broken trash compactor sending foul-smelling and possibly toxic sewage gas into his home, he said.

The smell has been an ongoing problem for about a month and the only remedy NYCHA maintenance workers have offered him is to open his window, Vega said.

"Who wants the top window open when there’s no heat?" Vega said. "We don’t have company over because we can’t. It’s disgusting. It’s unbearable."

Vega doesn't want to heat his apartment with space heaters or by blasting the oven because he's afraid of fire, he said.

"I watch the news," Vega said.

So the electrician and his wife, a special education preschool teacher, bundle up every night in layers of clothes and wool socks, then drive 40 minutes to her parents' house to take their showers, he said.

"This happens all the time," Vega said. "We just suck it up."

NYCHA was recently dubbed the worst landlord of 2019 for its nearly 350,000 outstanding work orders, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams announced earlier this month.

Thousands of NYCHA residents have already been affected by heat or hot water outages this heat season, which began on Oct. 1, according to Legal Aid Society spokesperson Redmond Haskins.

“When the Housing Authority fails to provide tenants with working utilities, as per law, it must issue rent abatements to those impacted," Haskins said. "This is the law for tenants in market rate apartments and it duly applies to those in public housing.”

Vega said he and his wife — who has recently developed a cough, he fears, from the sewage gas — have been regularly paying their rent on time to the city's public housing agency for more than a decade, he said.

"I just want them to have some consideration for tenants who pay all this money," he said. "All we’re asking for is a comfortable living situation: heat, hot water."

NYCHA's press office did not immediately respond to Patch's request for comment.

Mayor Bill de Blasio is slated to host a public Town Hall on the city's beleaguered public housing agency at Bayard Rustin Educational Campus at 351 West 18th St. beginning at 6:30 p.m.

Thursday Update: NYCHA reported heat was restored to Soundview Houses Thursday afternoon, though Vega said his apartment was still without heat Thursday night on Twitter.

Friday Update: NYCHA sent Patch Friday morning a statement taking objection to the limited time they were given to provide comment and disputing Vega's claim that he filed a complaint about the smell in his apartment.

“The heat outages at Soundview Buildings 11 and 12 were first reported at 4 AM early Thursday morning and were successfully resolved that afternoon," the spokesperson said. "NYCHA activated its Situation Room on Wednesday December 18th specifically to address unplanned heat outages across our 328 developments and registered only five over a 24-hour period."

"We are dispatching crews to address Mr. Vega’s complaints of lack of heat and the foul-smelling odor today.”