Crown Heights Tenants Say They Haven't Had Heat For 2 Years

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — Lisa Mathis was born at Kings County Hospital and grew up at 80 New York Ave. in Crown Heights. She moved out of the building for a few years but returned in 2004 to a unit down the hall from her childhood home.

For the last two winters, she says, she hasn't had heat. When Gold Management bought the building in 2015, Mathis says, it immediately harassed tenants to move out so it could renovate the units in the building to make a big profit.

That included removing the building's boiler, she said, so now Mathis, 56, sleeps with extra blankets and wears hoodies, hats and gloves around her apartment.

Five of the building's eight units have been renovated and were outfitted with individual heating units, tenants said. The other three units, Mathis said, have been left to the mercy of outside temperatures.

"It's ridiculous that I leave my house, and it's the same temperature outside as it is inside," she said, walking out of the building's door on a 40-degree day Monday.

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Mathis, several of the other building's tenants and neighborhood activists rallied in front of the building Monday morning, holding signs and chanting against unfair rent practices.

When reached by phone Monday afternoon, Chananya Gold, one of the property's owners, declined to comment.

Department of Buildings records for the building include a violation from December 2015 for a boiler that was removed without a permit.

The tenants' legal battle, which is making its way through local courts, is a microcosm of the push for affordable rent — and humane living conditions — across New York City, where refurbishing of old apartment buildings have led to soaring rents.

Those rent bumps have forced low- and middle-class New Yorkers further and further out from the city's heart, with developers hot on their heels.

"I know this building well, I know a lot of these buildings well," New York City Public Advocate Letita James told Patch Monday morning in front of the building.

"Management are evicting tenants, mostly illegally, because they’re trying to take advantage of the market. A lot of these units are rent controlled, rent stabilized. What they’re doing is engaging in renovations which unfortunately takes them out of rent control."

Mathis let Patch into her home for a tour Monday morning.

A small hallway opens up into a living room, where the lack of heat was readily apparent on a morning where temperatures were in the low 40s. A boiler sits in one corner, but the pipes have been disconnected, rendering it useless.

Mathis said management renovated other apartments in the building while she lived there, using noisy construction to try to force other long-time tenants out of their old apartments. The renovations caused her ceilings to leak, and rats were suddenly more common, she said.

A light fixture in the kitchen, where she said water had dripped through during construction, hadn't been replaced

At night, with the heat gone, she bundles up, and “if it gets too cold, I go up to the Bronx with my sister, or I just stay out," she told Patch.

And Mathis isn't the only one in the building fighting back.

Naomi Dann, 23, lives in one of the renovated units with four other people. While they have heat in their apartment, they pay $4,000 a month for rent in what they say should be a rent-stabilized unit.

Tenants in the building formed the 80 New York Avenue Tenants Association, which is fighting Gold Management with help from the Crown Heights Tenant Union and MFY Legal Services.

“We have neighbors don’t have heat," Dann told Patch. "And now we’re paying exorbitant prices that nobody should be paying. We really believe that there should be rent-stabilized housing. Everyone has the right to live in a safe, warm, affordable home.”

Mathis appreciates having her neighbors behind her.

“We’re a group of eclectic tenants," Mathis told Patch. "We have the young urban professionals, we have students, we have me, a civil servant. We’re all on the same page with this.”

Image courtesy Naomi Dann