Despite promises of repairs, some Harlem residents still without heat on Christmas
NEW YORK - Some neighbors in a Harlem apartment building are spending Christmas gathered around stoves and electric heaters to stay warm after weeks without heat.
Residents at 437 Manhattan Avenue reached out to CBS News New York for help. They said they're spending Christmas in the cold, and they've been without heat for about a month. They say problems with the boiler, however, have been going on for decades.
CBS News New York was on site Christmas Eve, and was told by building management repairs to the broken boiler causing the issue down in the basement would be finished on Christmas Day, providing heat for the residents. But when we checked back on Christmas, residents were still without heat.
"The oven is still on, 'cause I'm getting ready to make some more pies. I never cut that off," resident Louis Simmons said. "Heaters and burning the stove and heating the water. Yes, that's how we're keeping warm."
Simmons and other residents have to find ways to warm up as temperature dropped.
"How am I going to keep warm?"
Simmons was still wearing jackets and using the oven to stay warm, even though she knows she's not supposed to use the over for warmth.
"But how am I going to keep warm? I'm sleeping with clothes on," Simmons said.
"They say we're going to fix it, we are fixing something. Always they are fixing something, but never the heating," Jhovani Mecado said.
Mecado lives on the seventh floor, and faces the same problem.
"It's a long time waiting. Long time," Mecado said. "I have a lot of problems in my life... It's sad."
CBS News New York's Allen Devlin knocked on the door residents identified as the live-in superintendent, but nobody answered. Devlin also contacted the person that residents identified as building management by phone and left a voicemail. A text message was read by the recipient, but there was no response.
The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development confirmed to CBS News New York they have conducted multiple investigations on site have found heating code violations as recently as December. They added that if the repairs aren't made soon, their emergency repair program will take over.