Bed Stuy Residents Without Heat for 17 Years
Residents of a Section 8 apartment building in Bed Stuy have lived without heat for at least 17 years, DNAinfo reported. Shinda Management Corp. took over management of 305 Decatur Street in 2005 but has neglected to fix the problem. The company also locked laundry and public rooms, citing “drug activity.” “For me to have…
Residents of a Section 8 apartment building in Bed Stuy have lived without heat for at least 17 years, DNAinfo reported. Shinda Management Corp. took over management of 305 Decatur Street in 2005 but has neglected to fix the problem. The company also locked laundry and public rooms, citing “drug activity.”
“For me to have a decent place to live, warm, secure,” Collette Wright, 55, told DNAinfo. “That’s a basic human right, and Shinda deprived me of that right over and over.”
Wright, a tenant activist who’s lived in the building since 1996, says she had to fight to get baseboard heating installed in her apartment in August. This is the first winter she’ll have heat since moving in.
Heating and new boilers were supposed to be installed in 2008, but it never happened. Several other residents of 305 Decatur say Shinda had promised their heating would be installed, but still don’t have any kind of heating system.
The building is located in Stuyvesant Heights and dates from the 1890s. It was a Building of the Day in February.
“You dread every winter,” Wright said. “Have you ever been so cold that you’re under your covers and you feel the cold on your eyeballs?”
Bed-Stuy Building Has No Heat for At Least 17 Years, Residents Say [DNAinfo]
Building of the Day: 305 Decatur Street [Brownstoner]
Photo by Christopher Bride for PropertyShark
It was only a few years back maybe 2009 that this building had a big renovation. Somethings seems a little strange about this story. 15 years without heat is just wrong!