The holidays brought a stretch with no heat or power and a need to find new housing to hundreds of residents of Chicago’s Kenwood neighborhood.
Residents of two buildings owned by landlord Mac Properties in the Algonquin apartment complex were sent scrambling for shelter as the city declared the buildings unsafe to live in without power after unauthorized electric heaters caused an outage, Block Club Chicago reported.
Electric utility ComEd and city officials say Mac Properties installed the heaters in the apartments after shutting down the building’s boiler-based heating system for maintenance over the summer. On the morning of Dec. 23, a transformer for the buildings at 1607 and 1617 East 50th Place failed as a winter storm blew through, plunging temperatures with wind chills to as low as 40 degrees below zero.
Peter Cassel with Mac Properties said the power outage was caused by the electric window heaters in the buildings.
On Christmas Eve, the city ordered the buildings closed when power wasn’t restored by that evening. About 200 people living in 137 apartments were displaced for the holidays and are still looking for homes.
The maintenance completed replacing two basement boilers with 70 individual electric water heaters in each of the six buildings. The problem was that Mac failed to contact ComEd to upgrade service to the structures to accommodate the new equipment. Mac installed the window units without the required electrical permits, and in doing so, overloaded the electrical system.
While the city says the window units were to blame for the outage, Mac Properties maintains that units didn’t cause the problem.
“This is a transformer issue, not a window heating unit issue,” Cassel told the outlet. “… We agreed to disconnect the window heating units to reduce demand on the ComEd equipment while ComEd works to provide the appropriate power to the buildings.”
Shannon Breymaier with ComEd said the electric company is “evaluating all services for the Algonquin buildings” to determine if continuing to run the unauthorized heaters could potentially overload the other buildings’ transformers.
While power was restored to the buildings’ lighting and mechanical systems on Christmas Eve, they remain closed because they still don’t have a proper source of heat.
Mac Properties said it’s working with its lenders to adjust rents and it gave prepaid $100 debit cards to each household on Dec. 31.
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Residential
Chicago
Affordable housing landlord under fire for conditions at apartments in Chicago’s Kenwood neighborhood
— Victoria Pruitt