Residents at a Brooklyn apartment building have been suffering without heat and hot water for nearly 18 straight days of winter freeze — and they’re burning mad that the city hasn’t stepped in to make things right.
The privately owned complex on South 11th Street in Williamsburg first lost heat on New Year’s Eve, when a gas leak prompted a building-wide shutdown, residents say.
About a week later, a repair crew hired by building owners at Dov Land USA managed to restore the gas temporarily — but the Department of Buildings shut down the line the next morning because the work was done without a permit and dangerously botched.
Instead of intervening at that point and charging the owners for repairing the faulty work, officials at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development sat by while the owners dawdled for more than a week before even filing the required permit on Tuesday.
“It’s obvious HPD’s reaction has been incomprehensibly inadequate,” said Rob Spectre, a computer programmer who had to house his dog at a friend’s place because of the cold.
“They waited over a week for the landlord to apply for a permit? The [HPD emergency repair unit] would have the work done already,” he added.
“[I’ve] just got to believe there is a way to accomplish this without keeping around 70 people without heat in the dead of winter.”
Tenant Harold Joyce, 40, said the ordeal has left him and his wife feeling like irresponsible parents because their children have alternately turned blue from the cold or burned themselves on space heaters.
“It took 48 hours with five space heaters running full blast to get it livable. My wife was holding the baby all night that first night and [5-month-old] Solomon’s arm slipped out of the blanket and turned blue by morning,” Joyce told The Post. “That first week was ridiculously low temperatures.”
HPD policy states that “when landlords do not correct emergency violations, HPD may take action to correct . . . the condition at the owner’s expense.”
The agency said it issued three hazardous violations for lack of heat and gas service on Jan. 4.
But officials said they didn’t tap the emergency repair team because the apartments have individual heating units that would be significantly costly and time-consuming for the city to repair.
They also credited the owner — listed on city documents as Mark Berkowitz — with taking steps to remedy the situation, including distributing space heaters to tenants.
City officials had no explanation for the owner’s delay in applying for a construction permit.
Reps for Berkowitz claim he’s been on top of the situation from the start and has cleared the last hurdle in resolving the situation.
“Those permits came today, and the final work will begin tomorrow,” said Bob Liff, the landlord’s spokesman.
“Full service will be restored as soon as it is completed and approved.”