Tenants from 454 Bedford Avenue were joined by tenants of four other buildings to rally toward getting their gas turned back on.
“We’re calling on the city to make a change, take a stronger stance, enforce the violations, step in and do the repairs themselves.”
How would you like to cook a holiday meal on a hotplate? The tenants of 454 Bedford Avenue are faced with that chore right now and for the past nine months. A tenant complained in February about smelling gas. The FDNY and the gas company shut the gas off and off it has stayed. The tenants have made repeated requests of their landlord to return this much needed utility to the building, but there has been no reply.
A court case was filed on behalf of the tenants by Brooklyn Legal Services A.
“I think it’s an accommodation to the growing desire to support the real estate industry that is desperate to get out rent control or rent stabilized tenants because they can make so much more money,” said Marty Needelman, Esq., Co-Executive Director & Chief Counsel of Brooklyn Legal Services A.
Joanna Laine, also of Brooklyn Legal Services A, surmised, “There’s just no incentive for them to make any repairs. So that’s why we’re calling on the city to make a change, take a stronger stance, enforce the violations, step in and do the repairs themselves.”
The Greenline 