Crown Heights Tenants Who've Gone Without Heat For 2 Years Now Don't Have Gas, City Records Show

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — An apartment building in Crown Heights where some residents say they've gone without heat for more than two years now has no gas, tenants said Wednesday.

And its occupants are threatening to withhold rent starting June 1 unless their landlords — Chananya and Mendel Gold of Gold Management — install a working heater, hook the gas back up safely and return the building to its rent-stabilized status.

Reached by phone at his office Wednesday, Chananya Gold told Patch he did not shut off gas in the building and declined to comment further.

But city records show the building's owners had failed to install it safely. Department of Buildings records show that, on Mach 29, inspectors found it had been connected without proper permits.

The latest DOB entry shows it was still off when inspectors last visited on April 21.

The residents at 80 New York Ave. have waged a long — and public — fight with the Golds ever since management ripped the boiler out of the building in 2015 and installed individual heaters in five units that had been renovated, tenants said.

Three of the eight units in the building that weren't renovated haven't had working heat for the last two winters, residents say.

A lawsuit has been filed by the building's occupants against the Golds.

PREVIOUSLY:

• Crown Heights Tenants Say They Haven't Had Heat For 2 Years
• Battle For Heat In Crown Heights Apartments 'Grinding, Slow'
• Mom Whose Landlord Cut Off Heat Can't Host Christmas, Thanksgiving Anymore
• Getting Screwed By Your Landlord? 5 Things You Can Do To Fight Back
• Landlord Still Won't Say Why He Cut Off Heat For 80-Year-Old Woman

Things escalated about a month ago, the residents said Wednesday at a demonstration outside of the city's Division of Housing & Community Renewal in Fort Greene, when the landlords turned on a newly repaired gas line in the building without proper safety inspections.

Some in the building smelled gas, shut it off and called the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Department of Buildings records show that inspectors "found the gas on and running without authorization by DOB."

The most recent inspection on April 21 found "no gas throughout the building going on four weeks," the records show.

"They were just running them without a safety test," one resident, who asked not to be named, told Patch.

Angelica Blalock, who lives in a renovated apartment in the building, told Patch that she and the rest of the building are ready to go on a rent strike.

"I think it's time," she said. "Besides what I've been going through, the other people in the building have had it so much worse. It's ridiculous."

Photo by Marc Torrence, Patch Staff