Even the New York Times reported on the problem. All over Crown Heights, tenants were shivering through nights without heat. The disappearing heat wasn’t just a problem in my building. But the folks standing on that freezing sidewalk on Union Street knew better. I never chalked up that lack of heat to gentrification in action. “I’m Jewish too! That doesn’t mean I don’t freeze!” “Well, we’re Jewish-we don’t work on Saturday.” “I spent two days without heat! I need to have someone to call on Saturdays if there’s an emergency.” One of my frustrated phone calls went like this: I figured at the time that mine were hovering closer to the “lazy” end with a bonus bit of cheapness thrown in they just didn’t want to pay the extra money to really fix whatever was wrong. My partner likes to say that most New York landlords operate on a continuum between greed and laziness. It was so bitterly cold that I couldn’t help but think about the previous winter, my first in Crown Heights and fourth in Brooklyn, when my heat would mysteriously shut off, often just in time for the weekend when my landlords didn’t answer the phone.
On one of the coldest days of 2014 I put on long underwear, a flannel shirt, my thickest sweater, a hat, and a scarf, and took the subway two stops down to 1059 Union Street to join the new Crown Heights Tenant Union’s first public action. Sarah Jaffe ▪ Winter 2015ĬHTU members rally on a warmer day-J(Urban Homesteading Assistance Board) And a new tenant movement is leading the way. The problems of Brooklyn’s gentrifying neighborhoods won’t be solved by a housing-market version of “ethical consumption.” It’s going to take collective action.
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