NEW YORK – Some neighbors in a Harlem apartment building are spending Christmas gathered around stoves and electric heaters to stay warm after weeks without heat.
Residents at 437 Manhattan Avenue reached out to CBS News New York for help. They said they’re spending Christmas in the cold, and they’ve been without heat for about a month. They say problems with the boiler, however, have been going on for decades.
CBS News New York was on site Christmas Eve , and was told by building management repairs to the broken boiler causing the issue down in the basement would be finished on Christmas Day, providing heat for the residents. But when we checked back on Christmas, residents were still without heat.
“The oven is still on, ’cause I’m getting ready to make some more pies. I never cut that off,” resident Louis Simmons said. “Heaters and burning the stove and heating the water. Yes, that’s how we’re keeping warm.”
Simmons and other residents have to find ways to warm up as temperature dropped.