For years, Mei Zhen Xiao worked nonstop for a few days each week caring for an elderly woman who required constant attention. Xiao, a 64-year-old immigrant from China’s Fujian province, slept in a bed next to the patient’s bed and often awoke multiple times in the night.

“As soon as I would lie in bed, about to fall asleep, I would hear the patient call again,” Xiao told New York Focus in Fujianese through a translator. The patient needed frequent help using the bathroom and couldn’t be left to get up alone, Xiao said. “If I didn’t pay attention to her for one second, she would fall.”

In New York, home care agencies can legally pay home health aides like Xiao for only 13 hours of their 24-hour shifts, provided the workers have three hour-long meal breaks and at least five hours of uninterrupted sleep. Xiao, who was paid for 13 hours of each shift, claims she did not get the full meal breaks and rest required by the law.

After countless 24-hour shifts, she collapsed in 2019 and was taken to the hospital for a coronary artery bypass surgery.

Her doctor attributed her “dangerously poor health” to her inability to sleep, according to a new lawsuit filed against the home health agency that hired Xiao, called GreatCare, and the private insurance companies that cover home care through Medicaid.

Workers, advocates, and unions have long alleged that home care agencies are systematically underpaying aides for grueling, around-the-clock work. Now, Xiao and other aides are suing to hold the insurance companies accountable, too.

This fall is on track to be the second- or third-driest in New York City since the National Weather Service began collecting records in the late 1860s. The state’s head of emergency management has warned that, unless the city continues to get heavy rain every few weeks, the region could fall into a “drought emergency,” which would trigger mandatory restrictions on water use.

As the drought continues, officials are urging residents to take shorter showers, report leaky hydrants, and “stop using water that isn’t absolutely essential” — standard messaging during dry spells that recalls the “Keep New York Wet” PSA issued during the city’s last wave of severe droughts in the 1980s.

These admonitions, however, leave out a key source of water loss: leaky infrastructure. Last year, New York City gave away or lost about 15 percent of all the water that went through its pipes — some 155 million gallons per day. That figure includes all unbilled water, such as water used for system flushing, firefighting, and losses from billing issues.

But a large portion of the water loss is due to leaks.

New York could see more frequent and destructive blazes, but the state doesn’t have enough forest rangers and firefighters to respond to the growing threat.

A Wall Street mogul with unclear motives is gearing up to spend nearly a million dollars boosting candidates for New York City Council next year.