Red Hook Houses gets $1.3M FEMA grant for Sandy-related repairs

With Sandy-related repairs at Red Hook Houses finally drawing to a close, NYCHA has received a final federal grant.

Photo courtesy of William Alatriste/NYC Council Media Unit

More than 13 years after Hurricane Sandy, Red Hook Houses East has received more than $1.3 million in federal funding for permanent storm-related repairs. 

The funding was allocated eight years after the Federal Emergency Management Agency allocated $438 million for a recovery and resiliency project at Red Hook Houses, and nearly five years after the project it’s paying for – a restoration of a small building on Columbia Street – was completed. 

According to a NYCHA spokesperson, the $1.3 million was awarded for a renovation and repair job at Building 29, including new mechanical and electrical equipment and restored architectural finishes.

After the restoration was finished in 2019, NYCHA moved some small businesses from the adjacent Building 28 into the first floor of Building 29 as they prepared to demolish and rebuild Building 28.

When Hurricane Sandy hit in October 2012, flooding knocked out heat and electricity at Red Hook Houses, Brooklyn’s largest public housing complex, for weeks. 

The extent of the damage became clear when floodwaters receded — the roofs of all 28 residential buildings at Red Hook Houses needed to be replaced, boilers and electrical equipment were wrecked — the storm had touched almost every part of the complex.

FEMA allocated its first round of funding for Red Hook Houses in 2016, four years after the storm, and the city started repairs at the complex the following year. 

According to NYCHA’s Sandy Transparency Map, the recovery project at Red Hook Houses is set to be finished this year. 

Along with repairing storm damage, the agency has spent the past several years installing resiliency measures to prevent and prepare for future floods — the new Building 28, for example, now holds a “resilient state-of-the-art heat…