Welcome to my 'Hood

I've only lived here for 5 years, so I'm not quite sure yet if I qualify as a 'new yorker.' But I love the reactions I get when I tell people that 'I live in Harlem.' From the appraising you're-a-total-badass looks from my friends and family out west to the condescending glances of those Manhattanites living below 100th, I like knowing that this is my neighborhood. I live here. I grow here, and I'm HOME here.

Strictly Roots and Uptown Juice are the most amazing vegetarian places, and Pino's (whom I know personally!) Cafe hits the spot when I need comfort food and a hug. We just got a new park area landscaped by Fairway Market along the west side highway, and I can't wait to go running along the river when it's warmer out.

I love my building, I love my 35-foot long hallway, and the tiniest bathroom sink in the universe. I love crawling up to the roof on a warm day and basking in the sun.

A month ago tomorrow, however, something happened that threatened my sense of community and safety. Con Ed removed our Electric and Gas meter for lack of payment. The landlord hasn't paid the bill since September of 2008 and is over $20,000 overdue, and as a result we have no heat, no hot water and no electricity in the common areas of the building. We confronted him about it, of course--or rather, we tried. He was out of the country for the first week this was going on. When he returned he gave us excuses, and then, after minimal dialogue, fled the country again. There are rumors he's back but I haven't seen him. I want to know why he can afford to go out of the country so often, but not pay our Con Ed bill. The week after our heat and hot water disappeared, we were served foreclosure papers. Apparently he's been avoiding the mortgage bill as well. He hasn't registered the building in five years, either.

We called 311, we called HPD, we called Legal Aide. We called DHCR, we called the local news, we called our Assemblyman. Things are in motion, but it's been a month and I'm still freezing, wondering how this is possible--to let people freeze for a month, almost without notice. Does this happen everywhere, all the time?

Before this happened, I had never heard of DHCR, HPD or HP Actions. It had been so difficult to sort through which options to take, and how to be heard. Do the people (or recordings, in most cases) on the other end of the phone not realize we are freezing? That we can't bathe? We've run into one problem after another with this whole ordeal. For example, when HPD sent a Con Ed person to turn the heat and hot water back on last week, after days of phone tag and missed inspectors and about a million voicemail messages, they found the boiler and hot water heater in such a state of disrepair that they locked them down instead. It is too unsafe, with the condition they're in, to reactivate them. This past season, we were told, when the heat and hot water was operating, the pipes were so poorly contructed that CO2 gases were potentially leaking into our apartments! I could have died in my sleep! We looked into paying for the repairs ourselves, but when we were quoted possible thousands of dollars to fix everything, we realized that it was a dead end. We have to wait for the city to pick up the bill, and we're not sure there's anything we can do, if and when the heat and hot water returns, to prevent this from happening again.

I am losing my community. 5 of the 9 tentants occupying the building have moved out, including my roommate. I feel cold, abandoned, dirty, and lost in the cracks of the big apple. I AM A CITIZEN, I want to scream! I DESERVE HOT WATER! ...and then I realize how many people live every day without it, and feel kind of mindfucked. I never realized that things like hot water, and lights in the hallways were so essential, so forgotten, so non-important when you have them every day to take for granted. I washed the dishes while over at a friend's house the other day just to feel the warm water gushing out of the tap all over my hands.

I always thought my first blog would be a little more cheery. But wake up, fool, this ain't utopia. This is Harlem. And this girl's growing HERE...