Bronx apartment building residents say they haven't had cooking gas in 8 years, threaten rent strike
NEW YORK - People living in a Bronx apartment building say they haven't had gas for cooking in eight years.
Tenants say they're also fed up waiting for repairs, and they're now threatening to stop paying rent.
Luis Fuentes' apartment looks irreparable.
"This has been like this since June 2022," Fuentes said.
A huge hole in his bathroom ceiling is just the beginning. For eight years, tenants at the East 150th Street building have had no gas. Some use gas canisters to light their stoves.
"If the lock isn't put on correctly, then they could just catch fire," Fuentes said.
If that wasn't bad enough, there are additional issues.
"We have to deal with rodents, pests, roaches," tenant Catalina Carrera said in Spanish.
Now they've had enough, and tenants there are threatening to stop rent payments.
"We are demanding repairs that we need to be made get done," Carrera said in Spanish.
But there's much more to the story. Con Edison turned off the gas in 2015 after leaks were discovered in the building pipes. Then the building, which currently has 190 housing code violations, went into foreclosure three years ago.
Finally last year, a court-appointed attorney took over all management responsibilities, including collecting rent. An attorney told CBS2 News a contractor repaired the gas pipes last October and they "have been waiting for Con Edison to do their work to connect the gas line to the building for more than six months."
"Every single month, we've always paid. We've never had an issue with the rent," Fuentes said.
The wait has been unbearable for him.
"Hopefully we get a rent reduction and we also get our gas, because it's not fair that it's almost a decade that they've been living without gas," he said.
Con Edison says installation of new gas service lines in the building is almost complete. Then the pipes need to be tested for the service to be restored.
Whether that will all be done by the end of the month, only time will tell.