"No heat, no hot water, no rent": Astoria Houses residents frustrated by recurring heat, hot water outages
NEW YORK -- As the cold sticks around for a little while longer, there are some New Yorkers who are being forced to brave the elements inside their own homes.
The freezing cold temperatures outside are being felt inside at the Astoria Houses. For Linda Edwards, a lifelong tenant, it's made her bedroom unbearable.
"I lay here [in the living room] every night and sleep with blankets. Come on, now," she told CBS2's Kevin Rincon.
She uses a space heater in her living room to try to cope. Her kitchen is kept warm by her gas range.
"I turn this oven on. It's 33 degrees. I turn the oven on," she said.
She says nearly two weeks ago, the heat went out, which has become routine over the last several years.
"Every November, December, you have to go through the same thing. They run up here with thermometers. I told them I am the thermometer, don't come up here with no thermometer," Edwards said.
And she's not alone; others are having to adjust to the cold.
"Sometimes I have to come into the living room and sleep," resident Felicia Murphy said.
You can feel the cold wind coming through the windows in Murphy's home. To help, she's tried to cover them up with garbage bags.
"I've been here 44 years. The last two years, I've been having problems with my heat and my hot water," she said.
Trying to get answers has become its own nightmare.
"Put in a ticket, then we call the borough president. They keep us on hold forever, nobody ever comes to the phone, and I've done this five or six times and this is ridiculous," said Sylvia White, who lives in the Astoria Houses with her grandmother. "She just went and got under the covers and went to sleep."
They've had to turn to space heaters, too, to try to get by.
"At 98, and even me with 70, my bones, they're not like they used to be, so it's hard for us," White said.
They're frustrated that they're not getting their money's worth.
"No heat, no hot water, no rent," Edwards said.
CBS2 did reach out to NYCHA. It says there are no reported outages at the building despite what we encountered for ourselves, and despite active work order requests. We also reached out to the borough president but did not hear back.
