City health officials are advising residents of an East Village apartment complex owned by the Archdiocese of New York to take precautions after two residents contracted Legionnaires’ disease there within the last 11 months.
The advisory went out Tuesday in a Zoom call arranged by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) in which the agency revealed that two tenants in one of the five buildings in the Haven Plaza complex had been diagnosed with the potentially deadly disease within the last year — one in June and the other early this month.
The Legionella bacteria is transmitted via inhalation of water vapor, causing pneumonia-like symptoms that can be treated if caught in time.
During the call, health officials advised residents to temporarily stop taking showers and to fill up bathtubs slowly to minimize exposure to potentially dangerous vapor. Meanwhile tests of the water in the complex are underway, though results have yet to be announced.
The first test is focused on the water system at One Haven Plaza, the building where both tenants live.
“There are a lot of older people in these buildings, so it’s super dangerous,” Dana Cruz, president of the Haven Plaza tenant association, told THE CITY Thursday.
Late Thursday Rich Padilla, 54, whose wife lives in the building where the Legionnaires’ cases took place, said, “This is very scary right now. Hopefully not too many people get sick.”
Another resident who declined to give her name, adopted a stoic response to the health department’s advisory, telling THE CITY, “I will say one thing. I’m not doing anything they say. You gotta die sometime, so I’m taking my showers and doing everything.”
Cruz said she knew nothing of the June case until last week when DOHMH notified Wavecrest Management, the firm managing the building for the Archdiocese, shortly after discovering the second case.
Cruz said the tenant in the second case was over 65 and had to be hospitalized in an intensive care unit. That tenant rarely leaves her apartment so it’s unlikely she contracted the disease outside her building, Cruz said.
In recent years Legionnaires’ outbreaks have taken place at several New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) developments, including one in 2024 at the Langston Hughes Houses in Brooklyn that resulted in a fatality.
Doctors who diagnose a case of Legionnaires’ are required to report it to the city health department, and Cruz said it appears health officials did not notify building managers until after the second reported case.
When she learned of the most recent case, she spoke with building managers to see how they’re handling it.
“I said, ‘What are you doing about it?’ And they just hadn’t come up with a plan yet. I said, ‘Don’t you have to alert the city? This is like a big deal. This is not a small deal.”
City Councilmember Harvey Epstein (D-Manhattan), whose district includes Haven Plaza, said he’d spoken with DOHMH officials and encouraged them to test the water and release the results “as soon as possible.”
Health department spokesperson William Fowler issued a statement in response to THE CITY’s questions about Haven Plaza testing, stating, “The NYC Health Department has opened an evaluation at the Haven Plaza building complex after two residents were diagnosed with Legionnaires’ disease within a 12-month period. As part of our evaluation, we are working with building management to test the buildings’ water system.”
He added that the risk of getting sick from a building’s water system is “very low, especially for healthy people, but those who are in high-risk groups are recommended to limit exposure to water mist while this work is underway.”
Cruz and other tenants said they’ve struggled to get Wavecrest to stay on top of repairs in the 371-unit complex that includes both market apartments and households that receive federal Section 8 subsidies. They note that plumbing issues are a particular concern, with repeated leaks they contend receive only patchwork repairs.
Late Thursday in response to THE CITY’s query, Wavecrest and Catholic Homes, which oversees the complex for the Archdiocese, said they had “retained a water-systems consultancy with specialized expertise in Legionella to conduct all evaluations and sampling mandated by” the health department. Results “will be reported to DOHMH on the schedule they direct.”
Additional reporting by Lilly Sabella.
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