Day: December 24, 2024

NYC is enjoying a white Christmas Eve as the city’s sanitation crews work to keep streets clear and ice-free for all New Yorkers on Tuesday.

The NYC Department of Sanitation issued a winter operations advisory as of 4 a.m. Dec. 24. New Yorkers can expect up to an inch of snowfall on Christmas Eve, with a significant portion of the fluffy white stuff falling in the morning.

According to the Weather Channel, the last white Christmas in the five boroughs was in 2009. Historically, the city has an 11% chance of snow on Christmas.

DSNY officials began spreading salt on city streets Tuesday morning and will likely continue the operation if the snow sticks. The department said 700 salt spreaders were filled and “ready to go” as the snow fell. Workers will cover streets, highways and bike lanes.

There are no major mass transit changes at this time, according to the MTA.

Meanwhile, DSNY is still recruiting for emergency snow shovelers this winter who enjoy the great outdoors, can do the heavy lifting, and want to early some cold hard cash.

Shovelers are paid $18.54 an hour to start and $27.81 an hour in overtime each week. Anyone interested in applying must register for an application appointment online at nyc.gov/snow. The appointments take place at DSNY garages located in 59 sanitation districts throughout the five boroughs.

Information for private home and business owners

Home and business owners are responsible for clearing snow from sidewalks on their property, per NYC law.

If the snow stops falling between:

• 7 a.m. and 5 p.m., property owners must clear sidewalks within 4 hours
• 5 and 9 p.m., property owners must clear sidewalks within 14 hours
• 9 p.m. and 7 a.m., property owners must clear sidewalks by 11 a.m.

DSNY can fine property owners for failure to clear sidewalks. Fines start at $100 for the first offense.

Alternate side of the street parking is suspended on Tuesday, Dec. 24, to allow for snow-removal operations. It is also suspended on Dec. 25 for religious observance.

According to AccuWeather, temperatures will drop to a low of 28 degrees on Tuesday and reach a high of just 37 degrees on Christmas Day, Wednesday.

The Brooklyn Nets would have doubtlessly enjoyed their respective Christmas feasts a lot more with a win in Miami Monday night. But the previously slumping Heat had other ideas. At least the Nets can rest easy over the next two days after their fiery coach took it easy on them following their eighth loss in […]

The post No holiday cheer for Nets in Miami appeared first on Brooklyn Eagle.

While many New Yorkers prepare for holiday gatherings this week, 34 families in Gowanus Houses face a grim reality due to a gas line shutdown that has plagued three NYCHA buildings for weeks.

To spread some holiday cheer, Council Member Shahana Hanif (D-Brooklyn), her staff, members of the Youth Fellowship Council, and the Gowanus Houses Tenant Association distributed 37 freshly made holiday pies from Four & Twenty Blackbirds bakery.

The pies were purchased with donations raised through a Fifth Avenue Committee fundraiser. Emergency meal kits were also distributed to tenants of the three buildings — 182, 186 and 238 Bond St. — at Hanif’s district office on Dec. 21.

The pol told Brooklyn Paper that her office partnered with CHiPS, a soup kitchen and food pantry in Gowanus, along with Meals on Wheels, People in Need, and Grand Street Settlement, to organize food services for the affected residents. Those residents include families with young children, teenagers and individuals with disabilities.

“Everything about what we’re doing today is entirely driven locally, and it just shows the strength of our community, even in times of despair and when it feels like no one’s there for you, and so that’s the kind of vision that this office wants to emulate and show to our neighbors, our constituents, that we have your back,” Hanif said.

NYCHA, the largest landlord in New York City, oversees 169,820 public housing apartments across 302 developments, housing 360,000 low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. Due to years of underinvestment, interruptions to gas, water, and heat services are common. Gowanus Houses is no exception. Hanif’s office has urged NYCHA to resolve the ongoing gas outages, which have persisted since early November.

“Beginning in the last quarter of the year, we started hearing about gas outages. At the time, 26 families, the first batch of gas outages to then, 17 to now, 34 still affected,” Hanif told Brooklyn Paper. “It shifts from building to building. It shows just what the disinvestment of public housing is doing to these families who are living in some of the most affordable housing in New York City. In this climate of the housing affordability crisis, to know that our existing units are not being taken care of means that these residents are being abandoned and sidelined.”

Hanif acknowledged that NYCHA lacks the capacity to address service interruptions quickly due to years of neglect.

“[NYCHA] is incapable of fast-tracking or being as responsive as we’d like them to be, and that’s unfortunate,” she said. “I know that the representatives certainly care.”

In 2022, Hanif secured $200 million for repairs at Gowanus Houses and Wyckoff Gardens as part of the Gowanus rezoning deal. The repairs include new kitchens, windows and bathrooms.

“[The tenants] deserve it [after] years of lack of repair, decrepit conditions; they deserve new improvements,” Hanif said. “They deserve a house that is safe [and] stable and not one where they have to be anxious about whether there’s going to be gas or light or hot water.”

While NYCHA provided affected tenants with a single-burner hot plate and a slow cooker, Teresa Davis, president of the Gowanus Houses Tenant Association, told Brooklyn Paper that such equipment is insufficient, especially for families with children.

“By the time you sit [one cooked meal] to the side and go to put something else up there, that food is cold, and you’re trying to make something else,” Davis said. “By the time you finish cooking a whole meal, it’s cold, and you have to feed your kids, and it’s on a daily basis. You are feeding them before they go to school [and] when they come home from school.”

Some tenants face additional challenges due to medical conditions like diabetes.

“They’re on strict diets, only eat certain things, and some of them bake their food. So now they don’t have a place to bake their food,” Davis said.

Davis urged NYCHA to address the outages, which she said occur regularly. Many tenants feel upset and depressed, especially with the holidays approaching.

“We like to cook a whole lot of food during the holidays. You have your family around; that’s something special. And these tenants do not have that. They cannot do that,” Davis said.

In a statement, a NYCHA spokesperson told Brooklyn Paper that work is underway to restore gas at the Gowanus Houses.

“Gas service interruptions and restoration work are a matter of public safety and involve multiple partners and steps, including shutting off service, making necessary repairs, inspections, and coordinating with the service vendors, in order to safely restore service as quickly as possible,” the rep said. “These processes are currently underway at Gowanus.”