CALL MAYOR BLOOMBERG: THE CITY’S RESPONSE TO OUR NYCHA NEIGHBORS IS UNACCEPTABLE.

Twelve days and counting after Sandy hit on October 29, children, parents, families, the elderly and disabled remain without lights, heat, hot water or power in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).

This is true for houses in Gowanus, Red Hook, the Rockaways, Coney Island and elsewhere.

John Rhea, the chairman of NYCHA, told The Huffington Post that he and the organization have been doing the best they could. Unfortunately, he said, these buildings happened to be located in the areas hardest hit by the hurricane. Yet, power in those hard hit areas has been restored – just not in NYCHA housing.

Mayor Bloomberg has not addressed or remedied the failure of his city’s response. Nor has the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which funds NYCHA in part, sent federal contractors or generators to help coordinate this unacceptable human emergency.

Instead, thousands of individual volunteers, and community-organizing and health organizations like Occupy Sandy, Children’s Health Fund, Masbia Soup Kitchen, Red Hook Initiative, Make the Road NY, CAAAV, Doctor’s Without Borders (launching it’s first effort ever within the United States), and numerous religious institutions have tried to fill in where Mayor Bloomberg and NYCHA have failed NYC residents in desperate need.

CALL MAYOR BLOOMBERG TODAY: 212-NEW-YORK (212-639-9675). Tell him the response has been unacceptable.

CALL HUD’s NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS TODAY: (202) 708-1112. Tell Secretary Shaun Donovan that their response has been unacceptable.

See

Lucas Kavner, For Public Housing Residents After Sandy, ‘A Slow-Motion Katrina’, The Huffington Post, Nov. 9, 2012

Alan Feuer, Where Fema Fell Short, Occupy Sandy Was There, N.Y. Times, Nov. 9, 2012

Greg Smith, A Living Hell in NYCHA Houses: Agency Ignores Blackout Victims Trapped Since Hurricane Sandy, N.Y. Daily News, Nov. 7, 2012

Greg Smith, Housing Authority Scrambling to Restore Power to 11 Developments in Queens and Brooklyn by This Weekend, but Mayor Bloomberg says, “I’m not sure we can make it,” N.Y. Daily News, Nov. 9, 2012