UES Building Without Heat For A Week: Reports

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Residents of an Upper East Side apartment building have been left freezing as the season's first wave of cold weather hits New York City, according to reports.

There has been no heat or hot water at 260 E. 72nd St. — a five-story apartment building near Second Avenue — since building ownership changed hands after Nov. 1, CBS New York first reported. Tenants living in the building have resorted to sleeping on heating pads and bundling up under layers of blankets as temperatures have dropped into the 30s for this first time this season, according to the report.

"It’s the worst ever. I’ve never been so frozen," an 87-year-old resident named Geraldine Czenszak told CBS New York. "I had two to three layers of blankets on me."

The boiler in the building's basement is broken and an outdoor boiler was providing tenants heat and hot water, but the emergency boiler was shut off when the building changed ownership, the New York Post reported.

The building's new ownership's solution hasn't been to fix the boiler, but instead to provide tenants with heaters — which are not as effective and often prove dangerous — the Post reported. The new management company told the Post it is working "around to the clock" to fix the problem.

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