Residents of Fort Greene Houses File Suit Over Living Conditions

Residents from Farragut, Ingersoll and Whitman Houses gathered in front of Brooklyn Housing Court in Downtown Brooklyn Thursday to file a lawsuit against the city for what they called a pattern of neglect and put-off repair work.

Leading the way in the effort, with help from South Brooklyn Legal Services, was Families United For Racial and Economic Equality—many members of which openly criticized the New York City Housing Authority's efforts to rehabilitate and maintain buildings that are now more than a half-century old.

"NYCHA needs to expedite repairs, especially the ones that are causing dangerous health conditions," said FUREE member John Saulter. "But they keep telling you that they don’t have enough money..."

According to Lucas Shapiro, a senior organizer at FUREE, most of the complaints detailed in the suit center at Farragut Houses, with one resident reportedly living in a unit for nine years with a kitchen furnished, not with a stove, but with a hotplate. 

The suit comes as the city Housing Authority continues work on a multi-million rehabilitation project at Ingersoll and Whitman Houses to bring elevator service to every floor, enlarge apartments and upgrade kitchens.

However, for residents of public housing, capital projects like the one at Ingersoll and Whitman didn't go nearly far enough to address the problem.

"People shouldn’t have to live like this. NYCHA needs to fix the system so that we can live in our homes with dignity," said Cynthia Morgan, a resident of Farragut Houses whose unit was damaged by a fire last December.

According to Morgan, NYCHA said they would send someone over to repair boarded-up windows—on Dec. 26, 2012, more than a year after the fire.