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Apartment residents continue AC complaints
Tenants at Heritage Park apartments in Minneapolis say their homes remain dangerously hot due to broken central air conditioning, with no real solutions from management. FOX 9’s Mike Manzoni has the latest.
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - Tenants at a Minneapolis public housing complex said they are still suffering in sweltering heat and dealing with foul smells, with no real solutions from management.
Tenants say conditions have not improved since last month
What we know:
Residents at Heritage Park apartments continue to face high temperatures inside their homes because the central air conditioning remains broken.
Eddie Robinson, 75, is using two portable air conditioners he received from management, a high-powered fan and a dehumidifier, but his house is still hot.
"It’s just hot. I can’t take it," he said. "It’s 84 degrees in here right now. Standing right here, it’s 84 degrees."
Some residents are also dealing with a foul odor in their apartments.
Robinson’s wife, Alecia Howard Robinson, who lives and works in Chicago but routinely visits, likened the smell to a rotting corpse.
"I gag every time I go that way, and that’s ridiculous," she said.
She compared the smell to her time working in a county morgue, saying: "This is the smell that you smell when you come in."
Council member says tenants "deserve honesty"
Dig deeper:
In a statement on Monday night, Council Member Pearll Warren, who first brought attention to the issues at Heritage Park last month, said, in part: "Families are still living through dangerous heat in homes that were already declared unfit. So, I have to ask: What changed? The conditions certainly have not... The people of Heritage Park deserve better. They deserve honesty, urgency and a response that puts human beings before bureaucracy."
"Right now, I’m just forced to deal with this until we can figure out our next move," said Robinson.
The backstory:
The apartment complex, which includes both public housing and market-rate units, fell into disrepair during the pandemic after running into financial trouble.
The former owner turned the property over to a court-appointed receiver last year, but tenants said the problems have not gone away.
Since 2022, the property has received more than $10 million from both public and private sources to finance repairs and address other issues.
The other side:
Neither the management team nor the court-appointed receiver immediately responded to requests for comment.