Queens Tenants' Tempers Flaring After 9 Months Without Gas For Cooking
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Some apartment dwellers in Queens say they're boiling mad after over nine months without any gas to cook with. The building's owners say they want to fix the problem, but the city won't let them.
Resident Kathy Stubbs is forced to get by with just three electric countertop burners because her oven, and the ovens in the 193 other units at the Regent Apartments at 83-45 Broadway in Elmhurst have been without juice for over nine months.
"Right now (the oven is) just a big paperweight, takes up a lot of space," Stubbs told CBS2.
Another tenant smelled what turned out to be a gas leak in the building around the time owners were upgrading each of the units for heating. Their call prompted National Grid to investigate, discovering some of the pipes had been compromised and the gas was shut off.
The findings kicked off a flurry of petitions for repair work that the city's Department of Buildings denied, at least once for not having a bid at a cost that seemed appropriate for getting the work done properly. In the meantime, tenants say their diets and their finances alike suffer.
"We used to eat out once a week but now it's a couple of times," Stubbs said.
Tenants say they're caught up in the middle as DOB inspectors and the building's owners point fingers at one another. There was no answer when CBS2 knocked on the super's door, and the property manager claims the owner's been getting the runaround from the city. He added another petition for a repair work permit had been filed on Tuesday.
The DOB is, once again, considering it. Instead of heated rhetoric, residents say they just want their heat back.