Melrose Houses tenants complain of unreliable heat, want new boiler

<p>Residents are calling on the city to install new boilers inside the Melrose Houses in the Bronx.</p>

News 12 Staff

Nov 13, 2017, 5:33 PM

Updated 2,579 days ago

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Residents are calling on the city to install new boilers inside the Melrose Houses in the Bronx.
Tenants say they are sick and tired of dealing with inadequate heat and hot water. They tell News 12 they are worried they'll start to freeze once the temperature really begins to drop.
Denise Seisay, a mother of two, says she is fed up with sporadic heat in her 10th-floor apartment.
She says she has lived at the Melrose Houses for three years and that every winter it's the same. Seisay says she has informed the New York City Housing Authority several times about the cold apartment.
"They put in a ticket and then they send us back the email saying the problem has been fixed,” she says. “And it hasn't been fixed."
Tenant association president Jennie Cruz says she suffers from osteoporosis in both knees, but once a month goes door to door visiting tenants and compiling a list of their complaints.
"You see the consistency: No hot water, no heat. No hot water, no heat," says Cruz.
Councilman Rafael Salamanca Jr. says inadequate heat and hot water is a widespread problem within the 20 city housing developments in his district.
NYCHA released a statement saying, "The heat is now working, but we fell short of our goal to provide all residents the safe, clean homes they deserve. Our residents should never have experienced this outage. We must do better."
Tenants say they are waiting for that to happen so they don't have to endure any more cold nights in their apartments.