Free ACs Staved Off Heat Illness for Older New Yorkers During Pandemic: Study
Gothamist
By: Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky
It’s hard to remember in the dead of (an admittedly mild) winter, but summers in 72-year-old Christina Burgis’ Inwood apartment are hellishly hot.
“Dante’s Inferno,” said Burgis, who’s lived in NYCHA's Dyckman Houses since 1972. “When the sun comes in, it’s like a furnace.”
Since 2020, though, she’s had a powerful air conditioner in her two-bedroom apartment — courtesy of the city’s Get Cool NYC program, which distributed the devices to nearly 73,000 low-income seniors during the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic.
