No Heat, No Hot Water For Thousands Of Residents In NYCHA Complexes
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Thousands of people all over New York City woke up with no heat and no hot water on Saturday, the first extremely cold day of the season.
At NYCHA's Rangel Houses in Harlem, 2,000 people have no heat.
"Sometimes we turn on the oven, sometimes. Which is bad because, you know, you can die from that, but what can you do?" resident Prince Thomas said.
"The coldest day of the year," one man said. "Pay my rent, don't give no problems. I want to be treated like a human."
Rangel Houses isn't the only complex dealing with the problem.
It was the same story in apartment after apartment at the Castle Hill Houses in the Bronx. Ieshia Hall said she and her seven children had no heat and no running water Friday.
"We haven't had heat all day today," she said. "This is like a daily, it always happens in Castle Hill Houses."
They were forced to find other ways just to get by.
"We had to buy cases of water to cook and to pour into the toilet to use the toilet earlier today," Hall said.
Nearly 5,000 people live in the 14 buildings of the Castle Hill complex. NYCHA says the lack of water and heat was due in part to a water main break in the boiler room.
CBS2's cameras were rolling Friday as NYCHA workers were knocking on doors. We tried to get answers for residents but didn't get very far.
"Don't you feel like these people deserve an explanation? Can you explain why it took so long to get the heat back on today?" CBS2's Jessica Layton asked.
They wouldn't give us any answers.
It's not even close to over yet. NYCHA's website says it has at least 17 more outages planned over the next week or two to deal with heat and water issues.