UES NYCHA Residents Caught COVID At Higher Rates, New Data Shows

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Tenants in the Upper East Side's public housing developments were twice as likely to get infected by the coronavirus throughout the pandemic as the rest of the neighborhood, new data reveals.

The data, which shows the impact of the virus in the hundreds of buildings run by the New York City Housing Authority, was released by the city's Health Department this week. It was shared after POLITICO reported that the city had not provided any data on COVID-19 cases and deaths in NYCHA since May 2020.

The numbers confirm what many had already feared: residents of the systemically neglected public housing system have contracted and died from the virus at higher rates than other New Yorkers.

Within the Upper East Side's two major NYCHA developments, the Holmes Towers and Isaacs Houses, at least 258 people tested positive for COVID-19 between March 2020 and June 2021, when the most recent data is available. At least six tenants — all in the Isaacs Houses — died.

The infection rate in those two developments was about 12 percent — more than double the 5 percent rate that their ZIP code, 10128, had at the end of June. The citywide rate at the same time was 9 percent. (The true NYCHA totals are likely even higher, since the city's population numbers appear to be lower than the system's true total, POLITICO reported.)

Saundrea Coleman, a tenant organizer at the Isaacs Houses, said she was not surprised by the disproportionate hardship faced by NYCHA tenants, who are overwhelmingly Black and Latino — groups that have been more likely to suffer ill effects from the virus.

"I feel like NYCHA is a forgotten city within the city," she said.

In recent months, Coleman said, signs advising mask-wearing within her building have disappeared and NYCHA's practice of sanitizing building surfaces has stopped. To fill in the gaps during the pandemic, Coleman and other tenants have stepped up to help their neighbors through food and PPE distributions.

"It's people like myself that have to advocate and fight and push people to do the right thing," Coleman said.

Though she has worked with some Upper East Side elected officials to provide for her neighbors, the Holmes-Isaacs developments are grouped with East Harlem's legislative districts at the state level, making it harder for tenants to speak with a cohesive political voice, she said.

Another seven NYCHA tenants tested positive at Robbins Plaza — a 150-unit senior development on East 70th Street that sits about a mile south of Holmes and Isaacs, which occupy bordering campuses between First and York Avenues from East 92nd to 95th streets.

Here's the full COVID-19 data for each Upper East Side NYCHA complex:

• Holmes Towers:
  • 114 cases, <5 deaths, 928 total tenants
• Isaacs Houses:
  • 144 cases, 6 deaths, 1,212 total tenants
• Robbins Plaza:
  • 7 cases, <5 deaths, 165 total tenants

In other neighborhoods, the virus's toll in NYCHA was even starker. In Harlem's public housing developments, for example, over 300 people died from COVID-19, and one East Harlem complex saw more than a quarter of residents get infected.

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