NYCHA Leaves Thousands Without Water In Bed-Stuy Complex

BEDFORD-STUYVESANT, BROOKLYN — Charlene Taylor remembers the day she and thousands of her Brevoort Houses neighbors first lost water because it’s the same day she was rushed to Kingsbrook emergency room in an ambulance.

Taylor became dizzy about two weeks ago as she looked for the line of spigots NYCHA residents have since been forced to rely upon for water to bathe, brush their teeth and flush their toilets. So she ducked into the senior center, the development's official cooling center, only to find the air conditioner that broke a year ago had yet to be fixed.

That’s when she fainted.

“It was horrible,” said Taylor. “I’m a human being, I have rights just like anyone else.”

Taylor was rushed to the emergency room on July 16,. On Friday, she and about 2,000 Brevoort Houses residents are still waiting for the water to be turned back on in their homes.

“It should not take public pressure to increase the goddamn water pressure,” said Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who held a press conference outside the Ralph Avenue development Friday morning.

“I’m disgusted just to think of the culture of indifference in NYCHA … it’s a cesspool of cultural indifference.”

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams holds one of the buckets that Brevoort Houses residents are using to bring fresh water into their homes.

Problems first began at the Brevoort Houses about a month ago, when residents reported intermittent water pressure on the NYCHA online dashboard, a website meant to record and track tenant complaints.

NYCHA turned the water off, then it came back on for about five hours with the issue logged as resolved.

Shortly after, it went off again, Adams said. Now residents in 13 buildings and 894 apartments are still relying on a row of spigots set up at 311 Patchen Ave. for fresh water.

And they have no idea when NYCHA will finish fixing the undisclosed problem in one tank and cleaning the second, where maintenance workers found a homeless person sleeping, the Borough President said.

“That homeless person had a better accommodation than some of the apartments we’ve seen in NYCHA,” Adams said. “He would rather sleep in a tank then some of these apartments.”

Lucy M., 19, a college student who lives in the Brevoort Houses with her aunt, said she’s terrified for the seniors and mothers with small children who must lug heavy gallons of water up dark and narrow stairs into their homes.

Several residents who rallied out the Brevoort Houses, where residents must carry water into their homes, rely on walkers and canes to move around the sprawling housing development.

“It’s a human right for us to be able to have our water,” said Lucy, who declined to give her last name. “We don’t deserve whatever is going on.”

Lucy said she spent $50 for the gallon-jugs she fills with water, stacks in a shopping cart, pulls back to her building and up two flights of stairs to the elevator, which doesn’t always work.

Even though Lucy has to haul water and heat it on the stovetop to bathe, she feels lucky because, unlike some residents, she can afford to clean her clothes at the laundromat and doesn’t have to take care of small children.

“I feel violated, I feel abused, I feel the pain for everyone else because this is not right,” Lucy said. “It’s a hot mess.”

Adams told the outraged residents his office will contact Governor Andrew Cuomo to discuss implementing an oversight program similar to the NYPD’s CompStat to improve what he said was a systematic transparency problem at NYCHA.

“These are professional liars,” Adams said. “All people want is communication.”

NYCHA did not immediately respond to Patch’s request for comment.

Photos by Kathleen Culliton