Tenant power heats up

In the winter of 2023, Anna Nemetz asked the main­te­nance person at 792 Sterling Pl. if he could do anything about the temper­a­ture in her unit. The main­te­nance worker, ​“a really great guy” named Christian, was able to add some weath­er­proofing to the windows. But he knew there was a better solution. 

He pointed to a building across the street with condensers stacked on its roof, a clear sign that the building used heat pumps. ​“See those?” Nemetz remem­bers Christian telling her. ​“That’s what you guys need.”

In their quest to get better and more afford­able heat, the tenants at 792 Sterling Pl. needed to accom­plish two tasks: Get the land­lord to hear their concerns, and iden­tify a real­istic solution.

These efforts proceeded on dual tracks. Identifying the solu­tion turned out to be the easy part. Nemetz and other tenants did ​“so much research on what is the best heater that’s energy effi­cient and that is going to be effec­tive.” Sleuthing the internet, tenant leaders looked at metrics like ​“delivery cost versus heat,” and learned more details about heating systems than Nemetz cared to remember. 

Fortunately, this research didn’t take long: Heat pumps quickly emerged as a no-brainer solu­tion. ​“A lot of us had been in other apart­ments where we were paying for elec­tric heat, and we had these split units, and it was fine,” Nemetz said. 

So heat pumps became the goal. How to convince the land­lord, Safdie Realty, to install them was less self-evident. 

Though many tenants in the building were frus­trated with their heating situ­a­tion, uniting them was a chal­lenge. Nemetz and other tenant leaders put up signs with QR codes in the hall­ways inviting tenants to join the Whatsapp group. They hosted orga­nizing meet­ings at 99 Rogers, a nearby bar. 

But some tenants were already engaged in their own legal fights, and were not able to join with the larger group. Others weren’t inter­ested in fighting the land­lord, whether because they didn’t have a problem with the status quo, or because they feared retaliation. 

“People were really afraid, myself included,” Nemetz said. ​“I didn’t really under­stand what the legal impli­ca­tions could be.” 

Some long­time resi­dents were wary of newcomers who were ​“revved up” for a fight with the land­lord. “‘It’s always been this way,’” Nemetz recalls long­time tenants saying. “‘You think you’re just gonna come in here and change things?’”

Tenant leaders like Nemetz had to work to ​“get everyone on the same page.” Deep listening, conflict reso­lu­tion, and engaging people with different person­ality types became essen­tial skills. ​“Just because that’s the way things are,” Nemetz tried to commu­ni­cate to her fellow tenants, ​“doesn’t mean you have to settle for that.” 

Outside advo­cacy groups were inte­gral in providing the confi­dence that the group needed to proceed with its actions. At the request of tenant leaders, an orga­nizer from the Crown Heights Tenant Union met with the tenant leaders at a local bar to inform them of their rights. Representatives from city­wide tenant orga­ni­za­tion Legal Aid met with resi­dents, as well. 

Legal Aid orga­nizers explained the legal prece­dent for their situ­a­tion, said Chase Dimura, another tenant in the building. They ​“helped inform us of how to nego­tiate with the land­lord about rent abate­ment and how things would likely work if court action is needed,” he said. 

Ultimately, those efforts brought 71 indi­vid­uals in the 82-unit building into the tenant union Whatsapp group. 27 indi­vid­uals were part of the most recent rent strike this winter, repre­senting about 15 units, Nementz esti­mates. ​“The commu­nity aspect can help that journey be a lot better than if you’re just doing it on your own,” Nemetz said. 

In addi­tion to the strike, tenants did 311 mass call-ins to raise aware­ness of their chal­lenges with city offi­cials. The regular HPD inspec­tions that those called trig­gered became yet another pres­sure point for the land­lord to install heat pumps. (Safdie Realty and Elite Management did not respond to multiple requests for comment.) 

Finally, in early 2025, those actions paid off. Elite Management began installing split unit heat pumps, and by March, every unit that wanted one had one. Tenants will no longer have to look long­ingly at the condensers across the street. 

With their new heat pumps, tenants now have a year round temper­a­ture control solu­tion. Dimura had been using a standing air condi­tioning unit that was ​“quite poor at producing cool air,” he said. Now: ​“The cost of elec­tricity is instantly less, and it will have a big impact on the summer, as well.”