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AM New York
Some residents of Astoria’s Bridgeview II Co Apartments were left
without hot water and heat for more than 55 hours over the weekend, one
tenant’s son told QNS.
Although the hot water went back on for a few hours on Monday, March
16, it is off again as of Tuesday morning, according to Dannelly
Rodriguez, a student at CUNY Law and a community activist who’s mother
lives in the building. He said the heat never went back on.
“On Saturday at like 8:30 a.m., there was no hot water or heat, and
the day before there was brown water,” Rodriguez said. “This is
especially problematic because a lot of the tenants are elders who are
most susceptible to COVID-19, so I felt like something needed to be done
immediately.”
Rodriguez’s mother, who he says has serious health conditions and
receives Section 8, is one of those tenants. When he went to visit her
on the eighth floor, he realized the issue and that a number of other
people in the building also didn’t have hot water and heat. He then
started encouraging neighbors to file complaints with management and
call 311.
Bridgeview II Apartments, located at 26-45 9th Street, is a low
income, HUD apartment building with 110 units. It is currently managed
by Axion Management LLC, according to the Department of Housing
Preservation and Development (HPD) website.
Rodriguez, a former tenant of the building, said this is not an
“isolated incident.” He recalls filing a lawsuit a few years prior in
order to have the building fix his mother’s leaking roof.
“They have had these kinds of incidents in the past, including
boiler, heat, mold issues, broken appliances and windows issues,”
Rodriguez said. “The building has a host of violations. The culture of
this building is that they’re actively negligent and fail to make
repairs for the people who live there. Having this boiler issue now is a
manifestation of everything that’s happened throughout the years.”
An HPD spokesperson told QNS that inspectors assessed the building on
Monday, and found the hot water and heat were “adequate.” They said
heat was at 68 degrees (the high yesterday was 45 degrees) and the hot
water was 120 degrees, OSHA’s recommended temperature for domestic hot
water.
Rodriguez said the hot water was working after complaints were filed,
but the heat still wasn’t working as of Monday — for several apartment
units, not just his mother’s apartment.
HPD said they will work directly with tenants who need hot water and heat.
Over the weekend, Rodriguez took to Twitter to document what was going on — knowing that he’d get more responses that way.
From
CBS 2:
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer is putting NYCHA’s feet to the fire, alleging the city housing agency is stonewalling efforts to investigate why so many residents have been left without heat or hot water.
Stringer’s office announced that a second subpoena was issued to NYCHA on Friday, demanding they turn over information about multiple outages last winter. On Saturday, the comptroller said the city housing authority had “purposely done everything they can” to delay a year-long audit into the embattled agency.
From
PIX11:
Imagine what it's like if your apartment inside is as cold as it is outside, just as New York City is experiencing the coldest temperatures and wind chills in 20 years this weekend.
One Maspeth family knows firsthand.
"We keep the heater going nonstop and we keep bundled up at all times," Dawn Stahl told PIX11 News.
Dawn, her husband Michael and 16-year-old daughter Ashley have been living in the second-floor apartment at 54–66 46 Street with no heat and hot water for three months.
Her Con Edison bill is over $2000.
And to make matters worse, her oven and stove don't work because she said National Grid removed the gas meter in the basement because her landlord didn't pay his bills. She's now using a hot plate for cooking.
The family stopped paying rent months ago and took the landlord to court.
And now they're moving out in April, but, in the meantime, they have to deal with this weekend's arctic blast.
From
DNA Info:
Elected officials and residents rallied outside the Acropolis Gardens co-ops Monday, where tenants have been living without cooking gas and hot water for nearly two months — despite management's initial promise that the service would be restored by June 19.
Con Edison shut gas off at eight buildings at the development on April 29 because of "unauthorized, improper hookups," according to a spokesman. As of yet, only two of those buildings have had service restored.
The co-ops are managed by Metropolitan Pacific Properties, whose president Steve Osman previously told DNAinfo that Con Edison made an error in shutting off the gas after coming to inspect the properties following a small fire.
A Con Edison spokesman, however, said the service was cut because of "unauthorized, improper hook ups that violate building codes."
"Building management has been made fully aware of what they need to do. Gas was shut off for the safety of the residents," the rep said. "We'll continue working with the city to make restorations as proper repairs are made.”
An attorney for the buildings' co-op board, which contracts Metropolitan Pacific Properties, said Con Edison told them they need to replace the meters at the buildings, but that the utility company were out of the replacement meters.
Con Edison, however, disputes this claim, saying they have not run out of meters.
The attorney, Michael Maio, said the repair process has also been drawn out because workers have to check every individual apartment for gas leaks — none have been found, he said — which requires that tenants be home.
From the
Queens Courier:
State Sen. Tony Avella has joined the opposition to the planned conversion of an emergency homeless shelter at the former Pan American Hotel into a permanent facility due to what he called “horrendous” conditions at the site.
Avella, who is chairman of the Senate’s Social Services Committee, joined residents and local leaders to speak out against the proposal to convert the shelter at 7900 Queens Blvd. in Elmhurst to a permanent facility under a $42 million contract with the city.
“It is an outrage to take an abandoned hotel, warehouse homeless families inside it, ignore shocking City Code and HPD violations, waste an exorbitant amount of taxpayer dollars in the process, and then award a $42 million contract to a questionable-at-best organization, making the entire situation permanent,” Avella said.
According to the senator, the shelter houses over 700 residents, made up of families of which many have small children. Each unit at the shelter holds four to five people.
Because the shelter uses former hotel rooms, they are not equipped with cooking facilities. The senator and organizations such as Elmhurst United claim this goes against a NYC Administrative Code requiring that each unit at a family shelter have a kitchen, and in order to do this, there would need to be major renovations at the site.
The shelter has also had a large number of violations such as failure to provide hot water or heat for days, reports of bed bugs, peeling of lead paint in one unit, and garbage left sitting in front of the entrance to the children’s play area, according to the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Due to all these conditions, Avella said he calls on the city to reject the contract that would covert the former hotel into a permanent homeless shelter because he believes it is “not fit for long-term housing for the homeless.”
From
Crains:
Hundreds of New York City landlords whose apartment buildings remain without heat or power after Superstorm Sandy are being warned to get repairs lined up promptly as cold weather looms.
Under estimates Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave Monday, more than 800 storm-damaged apartment buildings lack heat because equipment in the buildings needs repair. Roughly 500 lack power. The vast majority are relatively small buildings, under six stories.
The NYC Rapid Repairs program provides free repairs to get heat, lights and hot water back on after the storm.
Bloomberg says landlords who don't sign up or arrange their own fixes quickly could face fines under city law.
An estimated 6,000 private homes also lack heat and power. But it's unclear how many of those are rented and subject to landlord laws.
From
NY1:
Public Advocate Bill de Blasio released on Tuesday his latest list of what he says are the worst landlords and buildings in the city.
Some 358 buildings are on the list, owned by 317 landlords.
At the top of the list of worst landlords is 1071 Home Corp, with 753 hazardous violations and five buildings on de Blasio's watchlist.
Three of the top five landlords have buildings in the Bronx, and two have buildings in Brooklyn.
Violations include lack of heat or hot water, lead paint, toxic mold or broken plumbing.
De Blasio launched the watchlist last year to publicly shame repeat offenders whose buildings don't meet city regulations.
Outing these owners, according to de Blasio, adds public pressure to have them make much-needed changes.
This year's worst building, 245 Sullivan Place in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, has 654 code violations.
Residents say the problems have gone on for years, from black mold to leaking ceilings and infestations of rats, mice and cockroaches.
From the
Daily News:
Bronx tenants who haven't had heat or hot water for three months took the dramatic step of hanging giant banners out of their windows this week, begging for relief.
The residents of 2285 Sedgwick Ave. are forced to use crock pots to heat bathing water, shiver beside space heaters and face sky-high electric bills since a July fire knocked out their gas service.
"I don't know if I can keep taking it," said Jonathan Rodriguez, 26, who is wheelchair-bound and needs hours to get ready in the morning because of the lack of heat.
Tenants of the 54-unit building have repeatedly called the city's 311 hotline to report the problem, but gas service cannot be restored until the gas line to the building's boiler and hot water heater is repaired.
