Elderly renters left with no heat at KC apartment building

By Alex Love

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    KANSAS CITY, Missouri (KCTV) — Tenants of a Kansas City apartment complex say they haven’t had any heat during this cold spell. And they fear the timeline to get repairs made won’t be fast enough.

Even when people who call Gabriel Tower Apartments home head inside, they still feel left out in the cold literally by their landlord because the heating has not worked while temperatures drop below zero. They plead for someone to help claiming their landlord isn’t doing enough.

“I can’t even sleep in my bedroom or take a shower because it’s so cold,” Teresa Jones said.

Since Jones moved into her apartment in December, she says the heat in her apartment has never worked.

“They gave us little heaters to use but they do nothing but run up our electric bill,” Jones continued. “It’s not heating up our apartment at all.”

Janet Woods lives on the fifth floor where ice has formed on the inside of her window frame from cold air blowing in. She’s resorted to using her electric oven to fight off the cold, regardless of the danger that can pose to your health.

“I turn my oven up to 400 degrees and open the door and I leave it on while I’m in here so I can have some heat,” Woods explained. Woods showed us how she tries to switch on the thermostat. But nothing would move or click, and no air would come out of the vents while we waited.

“I can’t see these animals go through it, I can’t see the elderly go through it,” Woods told KCTV about why she’s speaking out. “I can’t go through it so I can only imagine what the elderly are doing. I feel something needs to be done.”

Gabriel Tower is owned by Millennia Housing Management. They’re headquartered out of Cleveland, OH. We reached out twice on Monday for comment but never heard back. Since our interviews, residents have received a letter from the company confirming a boiler has been broken and a contractor is supposed to be coming by to fix it “no later than Tuesday”.

Residents are still skeptical.

“The city either needs to come in here and close it down for condemnation and find us a place to go,” Woods argued. “Or they need to get this Millennia Company to come out here and do their job and quit lying to people.”

KCTV also reached out to the Kansas City Housing and Neighborhood Services Department to see if this property was brought to their attention but haven’t heard back.

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