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NYCHA residents without heat, hot water on Christmas weekend

Thousands of New Yorkers in city-owned buildings were without heat or hot water Monday — a frigid jolt included a nightmarish Christmas weekend at an East Harlem building where tenants were left cold, wet and without elevator access after a rooftop tank spill.

“It was like a waterfall coming down the steps. I had to put a towel down so it wouldn’t come in my apartment,” Lincoln Houses resident Chante Hill said of the “dirty water” that seeped into her own and neighbors’ homes after the pump burst sometime Christmas Eve.

The misery was felt elsewhere as well for tenants in some New York City Housing Authority-run buildings.

According to the city, as of Monday, 3,000 people at Astoria Houses were without heat or hot water after both were knocked out at midnight — and another 3,000 were without heat at Vladeck Houses in Manhattan.

For Hill, the flooding at the Lincoln Houses was only the beginning of a frigid Christmas weekend, upending holiday plans, delaying deliveries and leaving her and neighbors shivering under several blankets.

“I don’t got no heat. I got walls leaking and everything,” complained Hill’s husband Jeffery Childs. “I just worked a double last night. You think I don’t want to take a shower? I don’t want to get under 4,5 blankets.”

a woman looks grumpy in a hoodie and blankets
Chante Hill under multiple covers in her Lincoln Houses apartment.
G.N.Miller/NYPost

Elizabeth Hernandez, 36, who lives at Lincoln Houses on the floor closest to the leak, said the incident initially trapped her there with her sister and three teenage kids.

“I have no heat. We couldn’t leave,” Hernandez said. “My food delivery was canceled because they couldn’t come upstairs.”

A woman in a red bathrobe stands at the door of her apartment, which is decorated for Christmas
Elizabeth Hernandez, a Lincoln Houses resident, said she had a food delivery canceled because of a leak in the building.
G.N.Miller/NYPost
Miller
Miss Miller, another resident of the building, said her apartment was filled with dirty “brownish” water.
G.N.Miller/NYPost

The water Saturday filled the hallways and poured down the building’s stairs, Hernandez recalled — trapping residents inside. The heat had yet to return Monday.

“It was like balls of water dripping all over. It was dirty, brownish water,” she said. “It was scary as hell. We didn’t know what to do because they didn’t tell us nothing.”

Another 50-year-old resident said the dirty water made it all the way down to her first-floor apartment and into the building’s lobby.

“All of the water started rushing into my house,” the woman, who gave her name as Miss Miller, told The Post. “My sons and two neighbors started sweeping the water in the shaft. It was like a river out here.”

a sign says "abraham lincoln houses"
A water pump burst Saturday at NYCHA’s Lincoln Houses.

Residents said the heat is often out at the facility.


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A water pump burst Saturday at NYCHA’s Lincoln Houses.

an older woman in her bathrobe stands at her door
First floor resident Stella Wilson said water came rushing into her apartment.


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The Fire Department arrived soon enough, but NYCHA officials were missing in action, Miller said.

“Housing never said anything to us. They just came and was mopping,” she said.

A broken window in the building’s lobby meant cold air seeped into the building, creating a potential ice hazard amid sub-freezing temperatures, she added.

“Someone broke the window out and it was brick cold,” Miller said.

A rep for NYCHA did not immediately comment.

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