NYCHA Tenants Demand Rent Rebates After Heat and Hot Water Outages

"Low-income residents have filed a class action lawsuit against the New York City Housing Authority demanding rent rebates for going without heat and hot water last winter.

A’Seelah and Tyrone Diamond, who live in Brooklyn’s Fiorentino Plaza, and Ruth Britt, of the Patterson Houses in the Bronx, filed the suit in Manhattan Supreme Court Thursday on behalf of themselves and other residents who were left in the cold for weeks between October 2017 and January of this year.

During that period 80 percent of apartments had heat and hot water outages that affected more than 300,0000 tenants.

Recently-ousted NYCHA Chairwoman Shola Olatoye and her colleagues admitted that the outages were “staggering” and “unacceptable.”

“But this denial of heat and hot water was more than just ‘staggering’ and ‘unacceptable,'” the suit says.

“NYCHA left tenants to fend for themselves and…many did so by layering on clothes and blankets and attempting to warm their homes via stoves and/or space heaters and boiling their own hot water,” according to court papers..."

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