Tenants in one Washington Heights building are still boiling mad as their building continues to have a lack of gas. NY1's Susan Jhun filed the following report.
For several months now, residents at 80 Fort Washington Avenue having been living without cooking gas. A month ago, tenants told us they were racking up expenses eating out.
"It's $30, $40, $50 a day that we're spending unnecessarily," tenant Elisa Read said at the time.
At the time, we called building management, New Castle Realty, for a comment but never heard back.
An HPD spokeswoman told us that gas was reportedly shut off by Con Edison in January due to a gas leak, and since then, the building owner hadn't taken steps to correct the problem. The spokeswoman went on to say that the building had 150 open housing maintenance code violations, and HPD spent a total of $18,000 in emergency repair charges on the building. As a result, she said the issue was being referred to HPD's Housing Litigation division.
Now, a month later, tenants still have no gas.
"It took you guys to come over here and put pressure on them for them to be able to even start the work," Read says. "Last week of April, we were notified that that’s when they started repairs, and that it was going to be another two to three months."
We reached out to New Castle Realty again but haven't heard back. We also called HPD, and it's once again looking into the situation.
We will continue to follow this story.