In water that is 40 degrees Fahrenheit, your fingers turn a dusky pink and your palms an alarming shade of blue. Washing your hair is surprisingly painful. Imagine cold water running directly into your brain, blade-like.
"You know, these things happen.”
A quote: my landlord to another tenant in my building, regarding the fact that we were on our 37th day without heat and the second week without hot water. It was out five days last week, came back on and then went away again. We all enjoyed its brief, though tepid, resurrection.
Today, February 25, 2009 is Day 39.
Okay, my landlord is not likely a millionaire even though he and his partner do own and manage several buildings in Brooklyn, New York. However, I am too pissed off to fret over semantics. It’s a safe bet that he’s got more money than I do.
When my boyfriend and I decided to leave our separate apartments and move in together—he had roommates, my place was a studio—we considered Queens where we knew we’d get more space for less money.
Travis has lived in Brooklyn since moving to New York from Miami in 2004. I’m fourth-generation Brooklyn on my mother’s side and my father’s parents came here separately from Galway and met at a dance at St. Gregory the Great, a Brooklyn parish. My American grandfather worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and had second job at Prospect Park’s boathouse. He was in charge of renting out paddleboats. My Irish grandfather was a sandhog who helped build the Lincoln Tunnel. My American grandmother worked at the Carmelite Cloister on St. John’s and Bedford. My Irish grandmother collapsed and died on a Brooklyn sidewalk on her way to morning mass. My mother was an ICU nurse at Kings County Hospital from the beginning through the very worst of the AIDS epidemic. My father and four uncles are retired FDNY: 3 Lieutenants, a Captain and a Chief. My cousin is now on the job in Bed-Stuy. Together, they have about 150 years of fighting fires in this city. Brooklyn is bred in my bones. Travis and I decided we did not want more space.
Problems with the heat and hot water began on October 27th. Out for a week. The heat went out again in November and again in December and then for good on January 18th. Since winter began, the water has never truly been hot. As of this week, February 23rd, the boiler has been condemned by the city. So says the big red sticker. We will have neither heat nor hot water until the boiler is replaced.
When will this happen? Excellent question.
The landlord says he cannot replace the boiler until the gas company, Keyspan, installs a new gas line. Keyspan has said—I’m Brooklyn paraphrasing—bullshit. A boiler could be run temporarily on the old line, providing some measure of relief until the new line is installed. Which should be real soon. In a few weeks. Sometime in March.
All of the tenants have made complaints to New York City’s Housing and Preservation Department, (HPD) an agency established to handle exactly this kind of thing. Inspectors have been to the building many, many times and issued violations, imposed fines. The fire department has also done inspections and issued violations. One violation states there is not adequate fireproofing around the boiler.
HPD says they can replace the boiler and bill the landlord as an emergency measure because no heat or hot water equals inhabitability thus creating an emergency situation that the city must remedy with emergency measures. Yeah, they’re working on it.
Our apartments are rent stabilized. In New York, with non-rent stabilized apartments, a landlord can raise the rent to whatever he or she wishes and is not required to offer a renewal lease. So rent-stabilized apartments are Holy Grails. By law, a landlord must offer a renewal lease for a rent-stabilized apartment and can only raise the rent a certain percentage until that tenant moves out. Once a tenant does move, a landlord can make ‘improvements’ to the apartment and submit to the city for approval of a new, higher rent. Once an apartment is ‘improved’ past a value of $2,000, it is no longer rent-stabilized. They can charge full market value. This is a quick explanation for a complicated law and it’s as I understand it from reading Tenant’s Rights websites. I may very well be missing some nuances. I am no lawyer.
I do know that in our building, the highest rent is $1790. The lowest is about $300. These tenants have been in the building since the late ‘70’s. Landlords are, to say the least, not fans of rent stabilization and it’s obvious why if someone is paying them $1400 less than the landlord could be getting for an apartment.
We pay $1600 for our one bedroom, the second highest rate in the building. Given all of this, I can’t help but wonder if the landlord is trying to freeze out the tenants who are paying so far below market value. Or us, so he can hike the rent above stabilization rates. I have no evidence, except common sense. I think it’s highly improbable that a good-faith effort to replace the boiler would take the entire winter. Does the landlord not have the money for a new boiler? Is he suffering from some awful malaise? Is he simply trying to raise incompetence to an art form? Questions abound.
And we are still cold.
On Tuesday, February 24, we held a tenants’ meeting in the freezing stairwell of our building. It lasted two hours. Wednesday, February 25, we saw a lawyer together and discussed our options. Take the landlord to Housing Court, which the lawyer has said will be a lengthy process as most judges will begin by giving him a month at least to correct the problem, even though this has been going on all winter. Rent strike. All of us stop paying. This does open us to eviction proceedings for nonpayment of rent. Try and get HPD to move on installing the boiler, probably our best bet. We will decide this week and let our lawyer know.
Thankfully, there are no children living here. Nobody is rich and nobody is poor. My boyfriend edits audio books from our apartment and I write fiction. I have published eight short stories, been paid once. My agent is shopping my novel, but in this economy I probably have a better chance of finding Jimmy Hoffa than selling a first book. I work forty hours a week as a receptionist. One woman works for a nonprofit, another in a hospital. One man is retired. One designs software. Another is a graphic artist. One woman is a dentist-turned-pathologist.
We all get that there are people far worse off than we are. We do. We just want what our rent entitles us to by law—decent living conditions. Some shred of decency in the landlord would be nice, but if you ain’t got it, you ain’t got it.