Public tenants without heat, hot water and power for weeks will still have cough up their full rent before getting a credit in January — a refund that NYCHA Chairman John Rhea called “a nice little Christmas present.”
Rhea made the Scrooge-esque comment Monday when he showed up at the Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn, where tenants have lived in deplorable conditions since Hurricane Sandy hit Oct. 29.
He told one tenant, “Hang in there.”
PHOTOS: HURRICANE SANDY THROUGH THE LENSES OF DAILY NEWS PHOTOGRAPHERS
“You’re going to get a rent credit. It’s a nice little Christmas present,” he told tenant Lisa Fret, one of 150 frazzled residents standing in line for Red Cross blankets. Fret got her power back Monday but was still without heat and hot water.
On Monday, Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio blasted Rhea, suggesting that the holiday gift was akin to a lump of coal.
“It is unacceptable to charge full rent up front for tenants who in many cases are still living in the dark,” he wrote to Rhea. “NYCHA should cease rent collection in affected developments until basic services are restored, such as electricity, heat and hot water. No tenant in public housing should be forced to pay the city for rent they do not actually owe.”
When Rhea showed up in Red Hook Monday, 4,015 residents there were still without heat and hot water and 2,125 were without power. Twenty-two of the project’s 32 buildings were either without heat and hot water or power.
No one seemed to recognize him, but when he introduced himself, the questions came fast and furious. One woman asked why she should believe him about the return of light, hot water and heat — basic services that have been out of commission in most of the development since Oct. 29.
A flustered Rhea replied, “I’m not making this up. Now that the equipment is here it takes three or four days to power up.”
He promised electric within the next two days but gave no specifics regarding hot water and heat. When tenants pressed for specifics on the hot water, Rhea kept it vague: “You’ll have it long before Thanksgiving, I promise you that.”
Another tenant suggested NYCHA had forgotten about its residents for two weeks, to which he responded, “You’re not forgotten. I wouldn’t be here if you were forgotten.
“We’re all saying a few prayers, believe me,” he added. “We recognize this has been unbearable for so many families. We’re trying to do our part.”
As of Monday, 4,400 NYCHA tenants in Red Hook, Coney Island and Far Rockaway, Queens, were still without power, while 18,000 residents in 14 developments in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan still had no hot water or heat.
NYCHA turned off elevators, hot water and heat two days before the storm hit in 26 low-lying developments near waterfronts and ordered tenants to evacuate.
Thousands of residents stayed put and when the surge hit Monday night, dozens of basements in these developments were flooded, knocking out power and doing damage to electrical gear boxes and boilers. Residents have since complained that NYCHA has done little to get their buildings back on line and failed to keep them informed about when power, heat and hot water would return.
Earlier Monday, Rhea told WNYC only a few NYCHA buildings were so badly damaged that they’ll need to be condemned.
“We think there will be a small number of public housing [buildings] where residents will have to be rehoused,” he said, declining to be specific.
In Red Hook, Rhea said the electrical gear boxes in many basements were so badly damaged the buildings can’t be reconnected to the Con Ed grid yet. In one Red Hook basement, a News reporter saw a wall knocked down by the water and the infrastructure in tatters.
Mayor Bloomberg defended his housing boss. “I’d love to get it done quicker but we have to do it safely and we have to do it so that the repairs stand,” he said.
With Erin Durkin
gsmith@nydailynews.com
