CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) - Renters of an apartment building on the Near Northwest Side are taking a stand after, they said, they had to deal with cold apartments for most of the month of December.
Residents of a Logan Square apartment building in the 2300 block of North Spaulding have decided to stage a partial rent strike over the heat dispute with their landlord.
Most residents of the blond brick courtyard apartment building said temperatures in their units during most of December were below the required city minimum which is 68 during the day and 66 degrees at night.
Half of the residents decided to withhold 50% of their January rents in protest.
“It was so cold that we had to run to Target, buy heated blankets in the freezing weather outside, pump up our space heater, which, of course, is driving up our electricity bills and, like, just snuggle under blankets. Like, I have a little chihuahua who was just freezing cold the entire time,” resident Becca Smith said.
Smith said the natural gas problem was hard to deal with during the Christmas holidays when they couldn’t cook holiday meals or dishes because their gas stoves and ovens were useless.
“As you can imagine, very, very, very frustrating. We were recording temperatures below 65 during the day and frozen mattresses when we returned to our bedrooms at night,” she said.
Smith said residents also had to spend extra money to keep warm. She said they bought electric blankets, space heaters and had to order out meals. She said some residents abandoned their apartments and went to live with relatives or checked into hotels.
Miles Bennett Hogerty is a tenant and organizer of the North Spaulding Renters Association.
“We had multiple tenants send notices to the property managers about the heat being out and they checked it, said nothing was wrong. We still said it was cold,” he said.
Hogerty said it wasn’t until Christmas Eve that someone finally came out and fixed the problem.
Residents say that, even after the problem was taken care of, many radiators in the building spewed steam that damaged their property, including electronics.
WBBM Newsradio has reached out to the property manager, M. Fishman and Company, for comment.
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