Freezing Crown Heights Tenants Demand 'Heat For The Holidays'

CROWN HEIGHTS BROOKLYN — Residents at 1030 Carroll St. have been battling fevers, chills, coughs and colds for the past month and they all blame the same person — their landlord.

“We don’t have no heat,” said Murial Beaupierre, 51, one of about a dozen residents who braved the cold Monday night to demand their landlord, Ephraim Fruchthandler, turn up the heat in their building. Beaupierre joined the crowd, despite feeling ill, because she was outraged at his behavior.

“I don’t owe the landlord, not a penny,” she said. “We shouldn’t have to live without heat.”

Inadequate heating has been a problem at 1030 Carroll St. for the past three years, ever since Fruchthandler — who was named one of the city’s 100 worst landlords in 2015 — bought the building and began offering buyouts, tenants said.

Clentine Fenner, 68, said Fruchthandler offered her $5,000 to leave her apartment, and when she refused, the heat went down and the super stopped responding to requests for repairs.

The heat comes on, she said, but only for about three minutes approximately four times a day, which means the pipes aren’t getting hot enough to warm her apartment.

“I’ve been on my back for two weeks in the cold,” said Fenner, who said she suffered a cold and a bad cough because of low temperatures in her home. “I can barely get out of bed.”

The tenants also worry about shoddy repairs — resident Dara Soukamneuth’s ceiling collapsed in 2015. And Beaupierre has watched cracks form along her walls and tiles fall at her feet as construction goes on in the apartment above hers.

“A whole week I’ve been calling the super and he won’t come,” said Beaupierre. “The landlord is trying to get us out.”

The angry residents gathered with Public Advocate Letitia James and Assemblyman Walter Mosley and the Crown Heights Tenant Union, who cast a large projection onto the building that demanded, “Heat For The Holidays.”

“It’s a moral outrage that he could allow people to live in these conditions,” said James, whose office publishes the 100 Worst Landlords every year. “During this holiday season, never give up, never give in.”

Resident Prunella Brathwaite, 71, who has also been fighting a cold-induced cold, said she’ll be spending this holiday season alone because she cannot invite anyone into her home.

“I can’t do anything when it’s cold like that,” she said. “I’m just up in bed.”

Brathwaite has lived at 1030 Carroll St. for about 40 years and never experienced these kinds of problems in the building before.

She’s had to borrow a space heater from a friend, but worries about the electricity bill, because her social security check didn’t cover the cost last month.

But the worst problem, Brathwaite said, is that the floors are so cold at night she’s afraid to get out of bed.

“You can’t even go to the bathroom,” she said.

Photos by Kathleen Culliton