Red Hook NYCHA Residents Went Without Gas For Months: Report

RED HOOK, BROOKLYN — Dozens of families that went without gas at the Red Hook Houses for months are asking that NYCHA reimburse them for restaurant meals, electric stoves and grills they were forced to pay for out of pocket during the outage, the Brooklyn Eagle reported.

About 60 families at the NYCHA housing complex had their gas turned off Feb. 13 and said it wasn't restored until late last month, which for some meant more than 100 days getting by with a single hot plate. One building, which had its gas cut in April, is still in an outage.

Residents told the Eagle that they are asking NYCHA to repay them for extra costs that piled up during the outage, including a 20 percent rent discount since the apartments were only "partially habitable" for the months-long outage.

“Basically they tell the residents, ‘You’re going to live under these circumstances and pay your rent, or you’re going to get evicted,'” Diimond Brown, a resident of the Red Hook Houses East, told the Eagle.

NYCHA provided a single hot plate for each apartment during the outage, but many residents said the device was dangerous or didn't work for large families, so they were forced to purchase their own electric stoves or grills.

Others say that the cost of eating out at restaurants piled up and some contended their health suffered from eating cheap, takeout food instead of home cooked meals.

All the while, residents contend that NYCHA officials were, at best, unresponsive throughout the whole process. The city only started posting signs and holding meetings in the buildings after an April 19 letter to the CEO of NYCHA, residents said, and tickets for work orders they placed went unanswered or were falsely marked as resolved.

The Eagle reported that a similar problem happened at the Red Hook Houses last July, when more than 470 residents went without gas. In total, 64 NYCHA buildings are currently without gas across the city, along with 10 that are without water and three that are without a working elevator, according to the housing authority’s website.

To read the full Brooklyn Eagle story click here.