NYCHA summoned reporters to a Manhattan housing pr✨oject Saturday to boast about a “blitz” of minor repairs — but while workers were snaking drainsಞ and replacing radiator caps for the news cameras, hundreds of other agency residents continued to suffer without heat or hot water.
It was as if the agency was bragging about BandAids during a bloodbath, residents complaine🐷d.
“We had hot water maybe five days out of this wಞinter,” mom💦 Daisy Dougwillo, 28, told The Post at Patterson Houses in The Bronx.
“There’s a lot more going on than just giving us new knobs for the radiators.🍰”
Under the minor-repair initiative, dubbed “NYCHA More,” teams of low-skilled 🍸workers were dispatched throughout the city Saturday to Ba☂ruch, Patterson, Kingsborough, Ravenswood and West Brighton Houses.
“It’s about us becoming better landlords,” NYCHA general manager Vito M♕ustaciuolo told assembled reporters at Baruch, on the Lower East Side.
Mustaciuolo was presiding over a flurry of plumbers’ wrenches, drainage sꦦnakes and new lightbulbs, as 15 workers labored throughout the day on a back⛄log of 500 minor complaints at Baruch.
Some residents were thrilled.
“I’m living lovely over here!” Cleo Franco, 63, told reporters🗹 as workers snaked her drains.
“Of course, I’ve had continuous problems,” she added. “But every time I call, I get my painting, I get up to date on the carbon monoxide, my kitchen is always corr💯ect.”
But elsewhere in Baruch Houses — in a separate building reporters had not been called to observe — The Post found four apartments lacking heat or hot water♋.
“They haven’t done nothing,” said one elဣderly Baruch resident who’s had no heat for two days.
“We have the heat, but right now we don’t have hot water,” her neighbor comp🉐laine🦹d.
And at Patterson Houses in The Bronx, The Post found six apartments where residents said they had no ♈heat — even as workers there supposedly “blitzed” away more minor repairs under “NYCHA More.”
None of the Baru𝕴ch or Patterson heat problems uncovered by The Post were on
An ongoing string of below-freezing eve𝕴nings weren’t h๊elping.
Accuweather meteorologist Randy Adkins said the temperaಌture in Central Park dropped to 24 degrees between 6 and 7 a.m. Saturday.
The mercury was expected to hover between justꦿ 26 and 28 degrees over⛎night into Sunday morning.
NYCHA is making some progress.
Officials announ🥂ced Friday out of a backlog of 50,000 “skilled trades” work orders — the kind requiring licensed plumbers, electricians, plasterers, carpe🅠nters and painters — more than 13,000 had been completed since July.
That work was done, and remains ongoing, thanks to a $20 million budget commitment fro🐽m the de Blasio administration.
Still꧃, that’s cold comfort for those wait💯ing for heat.
“My son has missed 8 days of school already,” Dougwillo said. “Do you think it has anything to do with feces being in the hallway and we not having hot water to bath with? I think so. I’m fed up and I’m sick of it. I’ve been here for two years still waiting on repairs.
“I thought the shelter was bad, I came from that to this and it’s a nightmare it really is.”
One father who didn’t want to be named said officials provided a yellow school bus for heat.
“They had a sign that said you can go down into the school bus to get heat. Who wants to go outside to the school bus to get heat?” he griped.
Additional reporting by Laura Italiano