PEABODY Jerry Halberstadt has asthma, and lives about a mile from a new fossil fuel-fired peaking power plant that's being built. He's very conscious of air quality because of his diagnosis, he said. "This stuff can stop me in my tracks. There's an impact from the burning of fossil fuels." But more than anything, Halberstadt worries for his three grandchildren, and "the
Jerry Halberstadt outside his low-income senior housing building in Peabody. He was masked except for this photo taken at a distance. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR)
Jerry Halberstadt, a tenants rights advocate who has fought bullying in low-income housing, is focused on a different concern these days. I’m 84, and unlikely to survive COVID if I get it, so I need to keep myself safe, he said. I’m concerned about the same danger facing 92,000 tenants in public and subsidized housing all over the state.
He worries when neighbors in the building for senior and disabled residents where he lives, in central Peabody on the North Shore, don’t follow rules about wearing masks or maintaining distance in the small elevator or tight hallways. And in the current surge, the risk has grown.