“Now, if not to get cold, one after another.”
Like every year, the heating season or “warm season” in New York begins from the month of October until the end of May. During this period, the building owners have a legal obligation to provide heating and hot water to the tenants, but this is not the case for the Carrillo family, who are literally living in an extremely chilling situation.
“Now we have three weeks without water or heat, but before, in November, even two or three weeks, not in October, we had no heat,” said Guadalupe Carrillo.
Carillo moved into this rent-controlled apartment in Harlem with her four children about a year ago, and not having basic utilities and the exhaustion of doing even the impossible has left her depressed.
“I feel like I’m living a dream, like I don’t see it as real. I can’t believe how a person is so inhuman, knowing that I have children, knowing the condition, because I also gave them the documents, that we have asthma, my children have asthma,” Carillo added.
But that’s not all, the family was left without electricity as they did not have their own light meter, leaving them now completely in the dark, having to resort to the neighbor on the fifth floor with a chain of extension cords.
“That used to be the children’s room, where now we’re using it almost as a ‘storage room’ because it’s a danger to children because the ‘extension cord’ goes out the window and there’s a breeze,” Carrillo said.
When NY1 Noticias arrived, Carrillo received a call from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development saying they knew about his case but the building’s Concord management company wasn’t answering the phone. This is not new to her since she has a log of calls and messages about complaints she has made.
Concord Management has several complaints and violations as we were able to find out from the authorities, we also saw this firsthand upon entering the building and even when we contacted them we had no luck.
New Yorkers have logged more than 50,000 complaints about heat and hot water since Oct. 1, according to data from 311.
New York City Heat Law requires landlords to:
From 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. the temperature inside an apartment must be at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit if the outside thermometer is below 55 degrees.
Between 10pm and 6am the internal temperature should be above 62 degrees Fahrenheit.
Hot water must be supplied 365 days a year at a constant minimum temperature of 120 degrees Fahrenheit.
If you’re a tenant with no heat or hot water, you should try to resolve the issue with your landlord, manager, or caretaker before filing a complaint with 311. If the situation isn’t resolved, you can even take the case to court.
