By Kevin Deutsch
[email protected]
NYCHA residents filed nearly 32,000 work orders to remove mildew from their apartments in the first months of 2019, with Bronx housing complexes registering some of the highest numbers of complaints, new data shows.
The Legal Aid Society on Tuesday released a Freedom of Information Law response revealing that NYCHA residents filed 31,837 work orders to address mildew in their homes between Jan. 1 and Sept. 4, 2019.
Residents of the Edenwald Houses in the Bronx filed the most work orders citywide, with 973. The Castle Hill Houses had the third highest number of complaints, with 517, while the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses tallied the fifth highest number, with 443, the data shows.
On average, complaints took the Housing Authority roughly 13 days to fix. Half the work orders took four days or fewer between request and finish dates, while a quarter of cases took 13 days or more, and one out of every ten took 37 days or more, according to NYCHA data analyzed by Legal Aid.
Mildew has the potential to cause health problems, including allergic reactions and asthma attacks.
“This data sheds more light on the myriad of issues NYCHA residents battle each and every day,” said Judith Goldiner, Attorney-in-Charge of the Civil Law Reform Unit at The Legal Aid Society. “From roach infestations, to mildew complaints, and frequent heat and hot water outages, it is truly shameful what these residents – who pay rent – put up with. We demand more funding from all levels of government – Washington, Albany, and City Hall – to ensure that these work orders steadily decline and that NYCHA has the resources to address other similar issues plaguing residents.”
Billions of dollars in in funding are owed to NYCHA by the city, state, and federal governments; money advocates say would help improve a host of problems in public housing.
More than 400,000 New Yorkers reside in NYCHA’s 326 developments across the city’s five boroughs.