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What the Thermostat Forgot

On Submetering, Memory, and the Long War for Roosevelt Landings

Eleanor Rivers

Nov 14

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I didn’t write this because I like the sound of my own radiator—not that it makes any. I wrote it because what’s happening at Roosevelt Landings isn’t just a story about heat or bills or broken promises. It’s about what gets lost in the fine print when no one shows up to remember. It’s about how silence seeps into walls the same way cold does—slowly, then all at once. And if you’ve ever boiled water just to feel your fingers again, or watched your neighbor fight the same fight for fifteen years without backup, then maybe, just maybe, this story’s for you too.

They told me to bring questions. I brought a pen I couldn’t find until the night before and wore lipstick I didn’t trust in the lighting at the Carter Burden Center. I’m old enough to know that meetings aren’t about getting answers—they’re about measuring the silence in between them.

The room was overlit and underheated, and the coffee, as always, had that faint taste of resignation. They gave out branded tote bags and little pamphlets that explained nothing. L+M reps stood at the front blinking like owls, clearly startled to learn tenants had memories longer than promotional pamphlets, while the chairs made sure we all heard every shift of discontent.

And there they were: Joyce Short and Romano Reid. Side by side. The former, all diplomacy and power points; the latter, raw and rumbling with the kind of anger you don’t get from theory but from broken baseboard heaters in the dead of February.

Joyce smiled at the room like she was hosting it. Romano grimaced like he’d rather knock down a wall. They leaned on each other—not just physically, but spiritually, like two parts of a radio that needed both static and signal to work. And to their credit, RIOC’s CFO Druvika Amin Patel and one of the youngest board members actually came—stood through the whole thing, too. It was like watching two lanterns flicker in a blackout. Joyce was the velvet glove; Romano was the brick. And RIOC? They were the potted plant in the corner, soaking up nothing in particular.

The Water Was Hot, and That Was Enough

That morning, like most mornings now, I boiled water for coffee just to feel the warmth bloom against my knuckles. The flame from my little gas burner is one of the few reliable sources of heat in my apartment. I don’t even always drink the coffee anymore. But the warmth—oh, the warmth—is divine. If the gas burner ever quits on me, I’ll have no choice but to hug the toaster and hope for the best.

I named my thermostat ‘Hope.’ It does nothing, but I still check it twice a day. The baseboard heater hums like a Buddhist monk but emits no discernible temperature. And the ConEd bill I received last month could qualify as performance art. I’ve left it unopened on my kitchen table next to an orchid I keep forgetting to water. The orchid and I have a silent agreement: we both pretend to thrive. That orchid’s seen things. Mostly me in three sweaters debating if microwaving socks is a fire hazard.

Memory is a Form of Protest

As I sat in that room with Joyce and Romano doing their duet. Romano brought the blade, Joyce brought the balm, and I brought a heating pad, a decade of déjà vu and three Advils just to sit through it. I realized I was listening to the same song I heard in 2009. And 2011. And 2014. Public meetings, PSC filings, REDAC walkouts. Tenants with folders of documentation and laminated clippings. The laminated clippings had more structural integrity than most of our apartments. The kind of advocacy that only happens when a building is eating people alive and no one upstairs cares to notice.

I remembered Joyce standing firm a decade ago as RIOC tried to mumble through a vote. I remembered Romano getting shushed at Good Shepherd when he asked why the insulation hadn’t been audited in 30 years. I remembered it all—and then, I remembered that most people hadn’t.

David Krawet, when he was still here in the flesh, would fight for my warmth—that I recall vividly. He used to stand beside Joyce, both of them fierce in the face of institutional drift. But now he’s a digital meeting block, blinking like a cursor that never finishes the sentence. Still angry, yes—but the kind of anger that’s lost its edges, floating somewhere between Wi-Fi interruptions and the mute button. My heating has not been his concern in some time. And while new board members have stood up, their voices drift like steam in January—barely heard, easily lost beyond the cold.

2019: The Year the Deal Was Done

When RIOC approved the 2019 lease transfer to L+M—via a shell so bureaucratic it may as well have been faxed from a Kafka story—they baked in the outcome like it was a casserole no one was planning to eat. They froze the Tax Equivalent Payment at just over $6.4 million, which meant RIOC had all the incentive of a radiator in April to revisit the issue. They called it stability. I called it sealing the vault and tossing the key into the East River.

Polivy was on the board then. Friendly with Joyce. Allergic to Romano. He liked his resolutions tidy, his advocacy polite, and his stakeholders pre-approved. Submetering wasn’t just enabled—it was choreographed, wrapped in jargon, and staged with the lighting of a high school play.

Send this to anyone who thinks ‘frozen taxes’ means they’re being preserved for future generations.

And yes, Krawet was on that board too—blinking in from his hospital bed like a man trying to vote himself out of history. He knew the pain. He’d once stood for warmth. But when the time came, he hit ‘yea’ like he was signing off a prescription.

Meanwhile, what we got wasn’t bills—yet—but a clear signal they were coming. The final nail was hammered in that day. Submetering, once a looming specter, became an approved inevitability. And while the heat still didn’t arrive, the future invoices were already warming up in the printer queue. The insulation? Still as theoretical as tenant input in a REDAC session, just with more draft.

The Joke Was on All of Us

At one point in the meeting, an L+M rep suggested we could “self-regulate” energy use by unplugging devices not in use. I laughed so hard I nearly cracked a rib.

“I’ll be sure to unplug my pacemaker,” I whispered to no one. “It’s a real energy hog.”

No one heard me, but I heard myself. And it was the first time in years I sounded like a writer again.

I hadn’t meant to pick up the pen. When Theo first came to me, eyebrows raised like he was surprised I wasn’t already dead, I told him I didn’t write anymore. “I observe,” I said, “and I knit judgments quietly.” But something shifted. Something about the dust on the windows at Roosevelt Landings. Something about Joyce’s voice lowering in pitch. Something about Romano refusing to lower his at all.

As the meeting thinned out, I lingered behind. Joyce and Romano stood by the coffee table—she touching his arm like they were standing in the last light of something. And maybe they were.

On my way home, I stepped into the corridor of Roosevelt Landings. It felt colder than the street. The kind of cold that clings, that remembers. The same cold that welcomed me years ago, and never quite left.

And I knew, right then: I was going to write again.

Not for redemption. Not even for revenge.

Just because some stories are too cold to be left untold.

*This is a work of narrative storytelling inspired by real events. Some characters, dialogue, and scenes are imagined to convey broader truths and do not depict actual conversations or individuals.