Long road ahead for tenants without heat at Raytown senior living apartments
RAYTOWN, Mo. (KCTV) - Step inside the 10-story Bowen Tower apartments in Raytown and you’ll feel the chill. The thermostat on the wall in the lobby is set at 75 degrees. Monday evening, the temperature read 54 degrees.
Several tenants on the first floor have stoves on and oven doors open to compensate.
John Washington is one of them. The 75-year-old is legally blind. He maneuvered past the oven door to pull out a frozen dinner and moved his face close to the microwave buttons with a magnifying glass in hand, then walked out of the kitchen while it warmed up, holding his hands on the walls to guide him.
He said he has had no heat since October.
A small, square space heater sits by the sofa in the living room. His caregiver loaned it to him. Two larger, radiator-style space heaters sit unused. A maintenance worker knocked while KCTV5 was in his apartment to offer another. Washington seemed irritated.
“I have one in the kitchen. I unplugged it because I didn’t want to bump into it,” Washington said. “That’s why I asked them not to bring them.”
Fellow tenant Cynthia Barlow expressed her concern. She worried he’d bump into the oven door. She offered up her own living room.
Barlow has lived in the building for one and a half years and has taken it upon herself to advocate for the others.
“The management changing back and forth. The maintenance people changing back and forth. It’s nothing steady going on,” Barlow said.
Barlow escorted KCTV5 to three apartments in total which had ovens and space heaters doing the work. There was a fourth she knew of, but that tenant wasn’t home, she said.
Property manager Cheyenne Reid spoke to KCTV5 by phone to offer an explanation. She cited a plumbing problem that can’t be fixed without shutting off the boiler for two days to flush it out. That would leave every unit without heat.
“To fix the pipe that needs repaired, they have to turn off the entire boiler system, drain the water out, and that takes 48 hours for it to drain,” Reid said, “which would leave every resident with no heat for two to four days to repair this issue.”
She said they simply haven’t found enough warm days in a row to do that.
“Every resident that does not have heat has been provided with several portable heaters,” she said.
Another tenant, Troy Kreissler, said he’d been keeping warm with his oven and a space heater of his own. He was never offered one, he said, but a maintenance worker brought one to his apartment while KCTV5 was there.
Reid said the heat and plumbing issues began before she took the position. Barlow said Reid ed the staff less than a month ago.
“I don’t come down here and bother her, because it’s not her fault,” Barlow said. That young lady just started. We’ve been through five managers since I’ve been here, and about six maintenance men.”
John Washington isn’t prepared to wait until the weather warms up to see the problem resolved.
“That’s a long wait. Winter will be over,” he said. “I’m getting ready to move I think myself, so I can have a better environment.”
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