'We slept on the porch.' Children, disabled adults displaced from home due to storm damage
Staff said they sometimes survey their properties after storms, but due to the volume of outages and with it being the Fourth of July weekend, it was not possible to survey all HRH's properties.
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Siblings Jayden and Jayana, ages 1 and 2, spent much of this past weekend playing, eating and getting changed in the dark in the basement unit of a multi-family home on Mill Street in Poughkeepsie.
A tree fell into the home during Saturday evening's burst of wind, which then leaned on a power line, forcing Central Hudson to disconnect power until the tree was removed.
Jayden and Jayana's parents, and other tenants, said they reported the damage right away to maintenance workers for their landlord, Hudson River Housing. However, they said no one came to help until Monday morning.
"They don't care if you have kids," said Vera Hewitt, mother of Jayden and Jayana, noting that responses to incidents or complaints are usually slow. "They don't care about nothing. The tree is still on our house."
Hudson River Housing staff told tenants at the scene on Monday morning that the incident was relayed to them only as a power outage, not a situation in which they were displaced and all the food in their fridges spoiled.
Residents said that if HRH staff had gone to the home after their calls to the emergency maintenance hotline, staff would have known their situation.
Staff said they sometimes survey their properties after storms, but due to the volume of outages and with it being the Fourth of July weekend, it was not possible to survey all HRH's properties.
By lunchtime Monday, tenant Korinn Murphy was feeling some relief since HRH had hired a contractor to remove the tree, booked hotel rooms for all seven displaced tenants, and is reimbursing them for their spoiled food.
Korinn Murphy says she and her grandson have medical conditions due to severe burns they suffered in a fire at their previous home last year. She says they are reaching their breaking points.
"Some people have been sleeping on the porch," Murphy said. "We've been sleeping in our car for two days. I just can't do it anymore."
Hudson River Housing CEO Christa Hines expects tenants to be able to return to their units later this week.
She said the confluence of factors, including the timing of the weather burst and the high number of outages among HRH's properties, made for a "perfect storm" that delayed the response.
"It was a very unfortunate incident that we are now making right," Hines said Monday afternoon over the phone.
