(COLORADO SPRINGS) — Tenants at the Marquette Heights Apartment complex in Colorado Springs are enduring weeks without heat, plunging an entire building into a challenging situation as temperatures drop below zero. Despite numerous complaints, tenants claim that building managers have not addressed the issue.
The Marquette Heights Apartments has two buildings, the one without heat is comprised of at least 60 units, housing families and elderly tenants. Jessalynn Nostrum, a tenant who lives in her apartment with her four-year-old son, first noticed the lack of heat in her apartment around the end of December.
“It started to get super cold in my apartment. I would notice every night me and my kid would be freezing,” she said.
After reaching out to the leasing office, Nostrum said they told her they were aware the heat was off attributing it to the malfunction of the building’s boiler system. However, she said she received no information regarding when the system would be fixed.
Faced with the unbearable conditions, many tenants have resorted to using space heaters to stay warm. Nostrum, concerned about her son who had been waking up crying due to the cold, even sought help on Facebook to acquire a space heater.
“At night, I make sure to turn them off, but I can’t say that every resident is doing that. So, it’s like there’s a high potential for a fire in this building right now,” said Nostrum, concerned for her and her son’s safety, as she finds a new place to move to.
Another resident, Olivia De La Cruz, has two space heaters going at all times but makes sure to keep them away from fire hazards. De La Cruz says she has to keep the heaters going because she is concerned for her four-year-old son, and seven-month-old daughter. She says she regularly checks her kids in the middle of the night, who she wraps in multiple blankets, to make sure they are warm.
Her son Felipe chimed in, saying, “It was too cold, it was.”
Several tenants refrained from being interviewed, citing fears of retaliation or eviction, but told FOX21 they reached out to the management office about the heating problem but received no response.
Amid the crisis, Nostrum took the initiative to call an HVAC maintenance inspector to assess the building’s boiler room. They discovered scale and erosion, revealing that although the boiler had passed an inspection two years ago, its condition indicated a need for replacement 25 years ago.
Nostrum says she is now speaking to FOX21, as a call for the building’s owner to take proper action.
“I mostly wanted to get him [the owner] to realize that people in his building were suffering and that he needs to take proper action not just about this one case but in the future,” she emphasized. Nostrum is also urging other residents to recognize their voices and stand against such conditions.
FOX21 reached out to Marquette Heights Apartments multiple times but has yet to receive a response.
Notably, Nostrum mentioned that the office started loaning out space heaters in the past few days, providing some relief to the residents facing the heating crisis.
