BUFFALO, NY – Heat and hot water have been restored to the Stuyvesant Apartments on Elmwood Avenue, after residents went without both for nearly 40 hours - for reasons still unknown.
The Stuyvesant is a seven story building which opened in 1930 as a hotel, and is now operated by the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority (BMHA) providing subsidized housing.
According to residents, the problems began Sunday evening and were not resolved until early Tuesday afternoon.
"I had to use those pans right there to heat water up, as did a number of neighbors, and I took a sponge bath," said Jim Glenn, as he stood at his kitchen sink and prepared to do some dishes. “That was kind of rough.”
Rougher, perhaps, was getting a timely response to the problem from the BMHA, according to several residents who said they could not get through to report the problems.
“All I got was a recorded message that said they were having phone problems," said Glenn. "It often
happens that way they get so many calls. I'm assuming everyone was calling maintenance,“ he added.
“I got through but after many, many phone calls," said resident Rose Zarbo, who said she was first able to speak with a “live person” around 9:30 Monday morning...more than 24 hours before the problem was finally fixed.
“Their usual response is ‘we're working on it but we are so under staffed,'" said Glenn.
A lack of maintenance staff for their many properties is something BMHA Executive Director Dawn Sanders conceded last summer, when 2 on Your Side did a series of stories about broken elevators at Marine Drive, another BMHA property.
BMHA did not make anyone available to be interviewed on Tuesday regarding this latest problem, or a litany of others described by residents, who say cold water is just the tip of the iceberg at the Stuyvesant.
“People are very unhappy," said Zarbo who mentioned other recurring problems include, but are not limited to, malfunctioning elevators, leaking walls, and broken lights in the building’s parking lot.
“Sometimes they fix things and sometimes they don’t,” she added.
“Then there was the problem of the bed bugs and cockroaches. I give them credit…they did spray several times,” said Glenn. "Other than that, that’s about it."
Zarbo, a widow, said she needs subsidized housing to get by, and has requested to be placed in another BMHA community.
“They told me there are 605 people ahead of me on the waiting list. I’ll be dead myself by then."