With temps dropping and a potential federal takeover looming, tenants are being hit with trouble on all sides – and some are talking rent strike.
Early on Wednesday morning, residents of the Moore Houses complex in the Bronx woke up without heat. Restoration was expected by 12 p.m., but by 4 p.m., NYCHA’s website still said Moore was without heat. More than one thousand people had gone for hours without heat on a day when a snow squall whipped through the city and temperatures were in the 20s. They weren’t the only NYCHA residents without heat or hot water. Outages increased as morning approached a close. A building in the Harlem River Houses complex lost hot water. So did a building in the Soundview complex. A building in Claremont Rehab in the Bronx lost both heat and hot water. These problems didn’t start on Wednesday, either. On Tuesday, senior citizens in the neighborhood of East New York complained that the Penn Wortman Community Center, where many of them go for meals and activities, lacked heat. “The senior citizens say they’re freezing, uncomfortable, separated, can’t continue their typical activities and sometimes can’t even get their meals because the room is too cold,” News 12 Brooklyn reported.
