ALBANY — More than three months after a series of burst pipes forced dozens of residents at Parkview Apartments from their apartments, tenants there are still dealing with the slow slog of repairs and frustrations over sanitary conditions.
The frustrations have risen to the point that some of the renters, including senior citizens and others on fixed incomes, have formed the Parkview Tenants Association.
Additionally, a handful of residents are refusing to pay rent.
Burst pipes — a total of five in one 24-hours period — during a February cold snap, ruined a large portion of the electrical systems, forcing the city to evacuate residents from the building’s top six floors.
Residents say the problems at the 12-story structure located at 400 Hudson Ave. go beyond this past winter’s broken pipes and lack of heat. Now, the main complaints focus on the lack of steady hot water, as well as constant pest infestations among other issues.
Diane Deitz, one of the tenant association organizers, told the city’s Common Council on Monday that she’s forced to go to her child’s house to shower and that she boils water to wash her dishes.
“It’s not safe for people to live in,” she said. “I won’t go back until we’re safe, until conditions are livable.”
Other residents told council members they’re dealing with mold or former maintenance staffers who still have access to their apartments.
A representative for CRM Rental Management, which operates the building, did not return a request for comment.
Marco Flagg, a tenant organizer for United Tenants of Albany, said 400 Hudson Ave. is a prime example of apartment buildings across the city that are deteriorating from lack of maintenance.
“What you have, more often than not, are community members that are doomed to sit in place as these apartments rot around them,” he said as he urged the council to take action.
In an interview last week, Jennifer Barone, who has lived in the building for more than five years, said she believed the building was making her sick.
Barone, who relies on a service dog and suffers from a number of medical issues, said she’s had water from the apartment above her drip onto her head when she’s using the bathroom.
“I had my hat on so it didn’t land on my head,” she said. “But it was nasty.”
Barone is among a handful of residents that management moved from the building and put into area motels while repairs continue.
Rick LaJoy, head of the city’s Department of Buildings and Regulatory Compliance, said that while it wasn’t quite true that tenants had no hot water, the building is a problem and he faulted management for dragging their feet on fixing the problems.
Beyond the hot water issues, the city has gone back and forth with the complex’s management for months, trying to force them to fix other problems. The building’s owner is facing multiple cases in codes court. The Times Union has previously reported on how those cases can take months to work their way through the court system.
But the city’s codes department has not been able to verify all the tenants’ complaints, including allegations of mold and contaminated water. LaJoy said if he or his staff does find mold, they would immediately cite the owners again.
“There are definitely some outstanding issues,” LaJoy said.
As for tenant complaints about the lack of hot water, he explained that some apartments have insufficient hot water, where residents need to run their water for more than five minutes before it warms up, while for others the hot water quickly runs out.
LaJoy said the problem appears to stem from two cracked heat exchanges — and there appears to be no quick fix even though tenants say they have complained about it over a year.
After months of attempting to wrangle CRM Rental Management to fix the hot water problem, LaJoy threatened to have the entire building evacuated and bill the company for the cost of housing residents. That, he said, got their attention and the company began cooperating with the city’s demands.
Still, repairs to the hot water system are weeks away. LaJoy said a contractor confirmed what the management company has been telling residents: That the necessary parts must be imported from Russia. Those parts were ordered several weeks ago, with the expectation it would take five to six weeks for them to arrive.