Heat fixed for Dartmouth tenants after weeks of problems
Good news for tenants left in cold with lack of heat, hot water for weeks
Residents of a Dartmouth apartment building, fed up with their landlord after they say they spent about a month making due with a lack of hot water and very little heat, finally got their heat back Monday afternoon.
The tenants said it was a problem for weeks, but Patrick Johnston, the president and CEO of Atlantic Living, said they were only without heat for a few days.
He blames a frozen pipe and a defective boiler.
He said Friday’s storm complicated matters.
"I’m a happy camper now, I’ve got hot water,” tenant Wayne Hall told CBC News after his heat and hot water came back Monday.
Hall had been heating his apartment with his oven, a safety hazard that he says is jacking up his power bill.
Tenants spoke out against Atlantic Living, saying enough wasn’t being done for them.
Daisy Sexton, the mother of two teenagers, said the temperature in her apartment was 10 degrees on Sunday.
"My 15-year-old took it upon herself to email the company. If my 15-year-old can do that and she can stand up for what's right, then I think everyone in this building should, pardon the expression, grow a pair, and stand up,” she said.
Kim Naugle's mother-in-law lives in her apartment and has Alzheimer’s.
"She takes blood thinners too so that makes her colder than you or I would be. When she has a bath she gets a lot colder,” Naugle said.
Tenants pay between $600 and $900 a month to live in the building.