Gene

The last time I spoke to Gene we were in the stairwell of my building, four days after Thanksgiving 2002. The ancient elevator that should have carried him down from the 5th floor was out of service, as it often was for days or even months at a time. As tenants we had gotten used to walking the stairs. We had gotten used to a lot of things that were not as they should have been. But the negligence to which we had all adjusted was finally crossing the line of what is tolerable to what is not—even to residents with rent-stabilized (and in Gene’s case, I think, rent-controlled) leases. On that day, we had been without heat or hot water for six days, during what was to be one of the coldest periods of that winter, although it wasn’t even winter yet.

The building’s old (likely original) wiring made using an electric space heater impossible as it would cause a fuse to blow. The fuse box was in the basement, only easily accessible by the elevator. Those that had somewhere else to go stay had gone there. A few that could afford it were staying in hotels. Most of us were running our ovens and dressing in layers.

New York City’s housing laws are some of the strictest in the country. They require landlords to provide certain services (like heat) in every lease, and they require that landlords maintain any services originally provided under a lease (such as an elevator, if it goes out of service, it must be repaired, even if there are stairs). Under rent control and stabilization, rent increases are decided by a Rent Guidelines Board every year, and it is usually less than 10 percent. Tenants are further protected by the fact that they must be offered a renewal lease, unless they are in violation of it (as in rent arrears). In other words you can’t be evicted because the landlord doesn’t like you, or wants to rent to his nephew, or because you complained to the city about a lack of services.

Approximately 1 million apartments are regulated under Rent Stabilization or Rent Control. Getting one of these leases is no easy feat and tenants hold onto them for dear life. For working-class families, their ability to live in the city is dependent on having affordable housing in a city where a modest (read tiny) one-bedroom apartment can easily rent for $2,500 per month. My building is under Rent Stabilization.

Conditions in the building had been steadily deteriorating since the death of Mrs. G., the owner, a few years before. She and her husband, a retired cop, had run the place fairly well. There were a few problems, but the only major issue had been a dispute over rotted windows and I honestly don’t think they understood the severity of that situation. Once they did, the windows were replaced. They spent their winters in Florida, but when spring came around they would appear on the premises, access the damages that had occurred in their absence and begin making repairs.

My ex-boyfriend had moved into the apartment while attending Columbia University (at a time when the neighborhood was considered so undesirable it was difficult to even get the students to rent there) and had lived there for more than ten years when I moved in. He was not an easy tenant and was often late with the rent. Mrs. G. would call and give him a long lecture that began with, “David you’re like a son to me.”  I always thought she had meant that as a compliment—that is until I met her sons. Mrs. G. died of breast cancer in mid/late 1990s. I only saw Mr. G. once after that. His bulldog/cop posture was sunken and he looked frail. Like so many men who have been dominant in their marriages, I think he realized how much of his strength had come from his wife--he obviously missed her terribly.

After that we were told to deal with their sons, lawyers in practice as G. & G. The only contact we had for them was an answering service and calls were rarely, if ever, returned. Jerry, the super of many years, did his best to keep up with all the repairs in the aging building, but all he could really do without any resources was apply various forms of patches and band-aids. Major problems like the boiler, the wiring, and the elevator went unattended and hazards within individual apartments multiplied. Renewal leases never materialized or would finally be delivered by Jerry, more than a year late. Often our rent checks were held for months and months before the G’s cashed them—they just weren’t paying any attention. But this was (and is) a residential building where people make homes and live out their lives. Their lack of interest was creating havoc in those lives, including mine.

The make-up of the tenants had changed dramatically over the years that I had lived there. When I first arrived in 1992, virtually everyone was Latin American—Puerto Rican and Dominican. (Spanish was the official language of the neighborhood and it was sometimes difficult to find someone who actually spoke English well enough to communicate.) There was one old Irish woman who must have been left over from before the Puerto Ricans got there. She was tiny, not even five feet tall, and seemed terrified of everyone, including me, who towered over her. She moved out within a few months of my arrival.

By 2002, there were other white people in the building who had brought with them their middle-class ideas of “clean white living”. One woman in particular was constantly complaining to (and about) Jerry on issues that seemed rather superfluous in light of everything else he was trying to hold together with little more than wishes and spells. “OK,” he would say. “OK,” and laugh softly. Jerry was Haitian and had lived in poverty I find it difficult to even imagine. Everyone’s fussing merely seemed to amuse him.

Among the older tenants, there were a Puerto Rican couple and a widow on the third floor. On the fifth floor, in the building’s only track of two-bedrooms, was Gene.

Gene was a self-exiled Texan, and although he had been in New York for more than 30 years, still had the accent to prove it. He was older than 65, tall and thin, and he wore thick, black plastic glasses. He had eye problems (I think due to complications from Diabetes) and would often wear a patch of gauze over his left eye.

“My mother’s people are from Tennessee,” he had proudly told me, when our similar accents had prompted a conversation about our southern roots and I had told him that I grew up in Nashville.

From what I gathered of his story over the years, his father had been a prominent Southern Baptist theologian. Gene had followed in his father’s footsteps to a certain degree (I think he was a teacher), but had come to New York to work with poor children in Harlem. He was married when he first came here, but said that marriage had ended because he suffered from depression. He had no children. He lived alone. His health was not good. He used to go back to Texas once a year to visit his “mama,” until she died in either 2000 or 2001. His life seemed to center on the church that he attended (and I believe helped found, Metro Baptist in Time’s Square). He was always friendly and we would often stop and chat when we ran into each other in the building or on the street.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving that year I was leaving the building, suitcase packed, headed to Maryland to spend Thanksgiving with my parents. Gene was coming in as I was going out and I asked him about his holiday plans.

“Oh, I spend every Thanksgiving at my church,” he told me. “We do a big buffet for all the homeless people down there.” He seemed happy and in pretty good health, for Gene. I wished him a happy Thanksgiving and headed off on my trip.

David and I often spent holidays apart, usually with our respective families. We said it was because we lived and worked together in a tiny space and thus needed our “separate vacations.” I’m not sure now what reason there was (or wasn’t) for us being apart on this occasion, as he stayed in New York—likely working on the newspaper that we published together. On Thanksgiving Day I called to talk to him.

“It’s really cold here,” he said. “And the heat’s been out since yesterday.”

“Did you call?” I asked.

“Answering service.”

“Did you call the city?”

“Umm...”

I knew he hadn't. Calling the city would have been "complaining" in his world. David did not complain.

“What about the old people?” I asked. “Has anyone checked on them?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Well, go check on them.” I said.

“You want me to just go knock on their doors?”

“Yes!”

By “old people” I meant the couple and the widow on the third floor. I did not even think of Gene. I would later realize it was my own prejudice and sexism that kept him from my mind. I was concerned about the Puerto Ricans; they were so small. I was concerned about the widow; she was a woman alone. Surely the tall white man from Texas could take care of himself, although he was as old as they were and the only one of the group with obvious health problems. In fairness to myself, I think the fact that they did not speak English made them seem particularly vulnerable to me.

David assured me he would check on them, but I knew that he wouldn’t. It just wasn’t in his nature to extend himself in that way.

I returned to New York on Friday. Posted in the lobby of my building were two old and often used signs:

BOILER BROKEN
SERVICE CALLED

And

ELEVATOR OUT
SERVICE CALLED

My neighbors had begun to scrawl comments, all fairly polite, considering:

WHEN? WHAT SERVICE? HIGH TEMPERATURE THURSDAY 18º

Someone had posted instructions for calling the city’s heat emergency line, which claims to require landlords to fix major violations (like no heat in winter) within 48 hours.

Someone else had posted their solution:

RENT STRIKE NOW!!!

It was obvious people had reached the breaking point in their tolerance.

I lugged my suitcase up the five flights of stairs to my apartment. David was wearing long underwear and boiling water on the stove to keep from freezing. I called one of my neighbors who told me he had checked on the “old people” and they were OK. We discussed strategies for survival and promised to each keep calling the G. brothers and the city. David and I got back to work on our paper as best we could.

During the next six days I, and many of my neighbors called the city’s heat emergency line repeatedly. We received no response, and later found out that none of our calls were recorded. I know I personally called three times a day. We also called every “Shame on You” type of local news program and every journalist any of us had ever met. Nothing. No one responded to our crisis. The G.s remained absent. They did not return calls.

The signs in the lobby multiplied as each resident voiced his growing rage. Eventually the neighbor I had spoken to circulated a letter in English and Spanish, calling a meeting. That meeting was the beginning of an organization effort that would last for years.

On that Monday in December of 2002, I was climbing up the stairs as Gene was making his way down. He looked weak and frail.

“This cold has made me sick,” he said. “I’m gonna go down to my church and stay there ‘til they get the heat back on.”

We exchanged a few more words about the building and he went on. He apparently stayed at the church until Friday, but just continued to get worse. A member of the congregation brought him home that evening after learning that the heat was finally back on. They urged him to go to the ER, but Gene wanted to go home and promised them he would call his regular physician on Monday if he wasn’t feeling better. When he did not show up for services on Sunday someone came to check on him and discovered that Gene had died over the weekend. The coroner determined his death was from natural causes.

They held a memorial service for him at his church. David and I attended, along with another neighbor. We were the only “outsiders” there; Gene’s life had truly been the church. They seemed like nice people, but I thought it strange that they seemed to have no anger over what had happened. Maybe they did, but their faith demanded that they deal with it in a different way.

As he had no family, there was no one to bring wrongful death charges against the landlords or hold them accountable in any way. As tenants we explored every avenue we could think of to bring about some kind of “justice”. No one seemed to care. “Old people die,” a journalist told one of my neighbors. “Happens every day.”

His apartment remained sealed for more than a year as issues of his estate were processed. The minister from the church spent several weeks cleaning the place out finally last summer. He had a big job. Gene had a lifetime of books and papers accumulated and he had apparently never thrown anything away.

Our organizing efforts were somewhat fruitful (and perhaps it took a man’s death to alert our landlords to their responsibilities). We now have a new elevator, new wiring, and a functional boiler. The G’s hired a management company to collect rent and see to repairs. They also fired Jerry, our super of many years and installed a new family, younger and healthier to keep the place clean and running. I refused to speak to them for a long time, out of loyalty to Jerry, until I realized how ridiculous that was. They are nice people—from Albania. But it doesn't seem the same without Jerry standing outside the building late at night when I come home, keeping watch as he always did.

Gene’s old apartment was fully renovated, redone from top to bottom. I assumed the landlords were going to try and charge market rent for the place, but as it turned out, one of them moved his daughter into it. She lives there now, a young girl in her twenties. I get the feeling she’s been told a very different version of the events of that Thanksgiving.

I like to imagine Gene haunting the place, sending icy cold shivers down her father’s spine whenever he comes to visit, but I’m sure he wouldn’t do that. And I’m sure he wouldn’t approve of me holding all of this against the G. brothers. As a Christian, he would tell me to forgive and move on. I guess Gene is in Baptist heaven now, eyes restored, reading to his heart’s content. And the rest of us are still living on Amsterdam Avenue, a close-knit group of neighbors after what we went though together. I think most of us are still working on the forgiving part, but we are moving on.

Liza Case
Copyright 2006
All Rights Reserved