Ana Victorio, 75, like the other tenants of this six-story rent-controlled building at 442 West 160th Street in upper Manhattan, are in a desperate situation.
“Well my daughter, you can imagine. I have three long-sleeved clothes, I have one emphasizes, I have a quilt. I have pillows…, and everything covered the window so I can get a little sleep,” she explains.
Victorio, who has lived here for more than 25 years, says that since January 1st they have not had heat and until this Friday afternoon they did not have hot water either.
“We totally want this to be resolved as quickly as possible to see if someone doesn’t get pneumonia or something.”
“And there is no supermarket here, there is no one here to help us with anything,” he adds.
They ask for help and say they are desperate to know that this weekend temperatures will drop with the forecast of the first winter storm.
“We are very afraid of the storm that is coming and it may be that nothing is wrong, more may come because winter is just beginning,” Victorio continues.
Some tenants are using electric heaters, although they believe they are not enough to combat the cold and raise concerns about their safety.
“Because you know that they have caused a lot of fires, so we just light it during the day and at night, and we pay for it,” says Claudio de Jesús.
According to neighbors, the ConEdison company disconnected the boiler on Monday after a carbon monoxide leak. An escape that, according to them, led to the temporary evacuation of some tenants from their apartments.
“I don’t know if it was with Edison, the firefighters came and gave me the level, the carbon dioxide level here was 50. They had the window opened and they didn’t take them outside. Many problems here,” says De Jesús.
Residents say they have made several complaints online to the Department of Housing Preservation and 311 and that as of Friday afternoon nothing had been done.
For his part, an employee of the company, JSAF Management, in charge of the building, who did not want to identify himself, told us by phone that they are working to fix this problem.
And they have already begun to install a temporary boiler to provide hot water and heating as soon as possible.
