Crockpot Donations Aid Astoria Houses Tenants Still Without Gas

ASTORIA, QUEENS — Volunteers are helping Astoria Houses tenants get cooking as they approach nearly two months without gas in their kitchens.

Queens Together, a local organization dedicated to restaurant advocacy and community service, led a team of volunteers and elected officials distributing crockpots and grocery items Sunday to the dozens of families in the NYCHA complex who have had no cooking gas since Sept. 23.

The outage is affecting 48 apartments, a NYCHA spokesperson told Patch last month. It's unclear when gas service will be restored.

“Where NYCHA has let residents down, the Astoria Houses community has stepped up,” City Council Member Costa Constantinides said in a statement. “A gas outage should not take away our neighbors’ ability to celebrate Thanksgiving, a holiday rooted in family recipes and celebration."

Since the outage was first reported, NYCHA provided residents with hot plates and is making unspecified "additional contingency measures," the agency said.

"The gas service restoration process involves multiple partners and steps and we are currently working with an outside vendor to expedite this process," Nekoro Gomes, NYCHA's media director, said in a statement last month. "We are regularly providing residents with updates on the progress made towards service restoration."