NEW YORK — The windowless corridor on a 20th floor in the Mott Haven Houses — a cluster of public-housing towers in the South Bronx — felt like a thoroughfare, even in the middle of a pandemic when residents are supposed to be avoiding one another.
People and their dogs poured out of the elevator, joining others in an already crowded hallway. Many residents kept their apartment doors open, allowing for a slight breeze even though the air stank of urine in some places and bleach in others.
If anyone had a face mask, they wore it around their neck.
Yet as he hung out in a stairwell holding his cane, Edgar Martinez said he believes the hardest days are still to come here.
“The summer is going to make it worse,” said Martinez, 62, who is Puerto Rican and has lived in these projects since he was 12. “These kids can’t go to the park no more. They can’t play. Imagine if you have four, five kids in your house.”
Visiting from one building over, 68-year-old Rosemary Garcia was thinking the same.
“It’s going to get real, real hot,” Garcia said, recalling how she lost two neighbors last year during a heat wave, an annual danger for the millions of Americans who live in low-income or elderly housing…
To read the entire article from The Washington Post, click https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/will-summer-kill-coronavirus/2020/04/27/5ec70fd8-8670-11ea-a3eb-e9fc93160703_story.html
