N.Y.C. faces housing crisis in wake of storm

40,000 to needshelter as powerremains shut off

Garbage lies piled on the street in the New Dorp neighborhood of Staten Island, N.Y., on Sunday. FEMA says 182,000 individuals in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey have registered for aid.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Garbage lies piled on the street in the New Dorp neighborhood of Staten Island, N.Y., on Sunday. FEMA says 182,000 individuals in Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey have registered for aid.

NEW YORK — A hous­ing cri­sis loomed in New York City as vic­tims of su­per­storm Sandy strug­gled with­out heat in near-freez­ing tem­per­a­tures on Sun­day, and nearly 1 mil­lion peo­ple in neigh­bor­ing New Jer­sey shiv­ered in the dark with­out power.

Fuel short­ages and power out­ages lin­gered nearly a week af­ter one of the worst storms in U.S. his­tory flooded homes in coastal neigh­bor­hoods.

New York City Mayor Mi­chael Bloomberg said up to 40,000 peo­ple in New York City alone would need shel­ter.

“We don’t have a lot of empty hous­ing in this city. It’s a prob­lem to find hous­ing. We’re not go­ing to let any­body go sleep­ing in the street,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “But it’s a chal­lenge and we’re work­ing on this as fast as we can.”

Tem­per­a­tures were fore­cast to fall close to freez­ing over­night, and an early-sea­son “Nor’eas­ter” storm was ex­pected to hit the bat­tered re­gion this week with strong winds and heavy rain.

Janet Na­pol­i­tano, U.S. home­land se­cu­rity sec­re­tary, said fed­eral agen­cies are look­ing for apart­ments and ho­tel rooms for peo­ple dis­placed by Sandy.

The Fed­eral Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency said 182,000 in­di­vid­u­als in Con­necti­cut, New York, and New Jer­sey had reg­is­tered for as­sis­tance by Sun­day af­ter­noon, and more than $158 mil­lion had been ap­proved.

Sun­day was to have been New York City Mara­thon day, an oc­ca­sion that nor­mally draws more than 40,000 run­ners from around the world. But Mr. Bloomberg abruptly called off the race on Fri­day, bow­ing to crit­i­cism that it would di­vert re­sources from flood-rav­aged neigh­bor­hoods.

With­out a race, hun­dreds of run­ners set off on in­for­mal runs to de­liver food and clothes to peo­ple in need. More than 1,000 peo­ple crowded onto two Staten Island Ferry boats early on Sun­day, headed to the stricken bor­ough with re­lief sup­plies.

The New York Har­bor en­ergy net­work was re­turn­ing to nor­mal on Sun­day with main­line power re­stored, but there were grow­ing con­cerns about heat­ing oil sup­plies with cold weather fore­cast.

Most schools were sched­uled to re­open to­day, al­though some were still be­ing used as shel­ters.

An es­ti­mated 1.9 mil­lion homes and busi­ness still lacked power across the North­east on Sun­day, down from 2.5 mil­lion the day be­fore.

Mean­while, NBC said its ben­e­fit con­cert for vic­tims of Sandy drew nearly $23 mil­lion in do­na­tions to the Amer­i­can Red Cross.

Fri­day’s hour-long te­le­thon in­cluded per­for­mances by art­ists na­tive to the ar­eas hard­est-hit by Sandy. Pledges made by phone and on­line to­taled $22.9 mil­lion, NBCUniver­sal and the Amer­i­can Red Cross said.