The Legal Aid Society condemned the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) for failing thousands of residents so far this heat season with widespread heat and hot water outages. According to testimony delivered by NYCHA at today’s City Council hearing on the Housing Authority’s readiness for winter, residents have submitted 130,000 individual complaints for heat/hot water outages this heat season, which started on October 1, 2019, reports Bklyner. According to NYCHA, the Independence Houses lodged the largest number of these complaints.

“By this measure, NYCHA is clearly not ready for winter. An unacceptable number of residents – seniors, the disabled, and young children – have already suffered outages,” said Judith Goldiner, Attorney-In-Charge of the Civil Law Reform Unit at The Legal Aid Society. “This is nothing that the Housing Authority should tout but rather something to apologize for. The Legal Aid Society again calls on NYCHA to issue rent abatements to those households who have gone without critical utilities this heat season.”