‘Something needs to be done’: Marshalltown couple living with no AC in mobile home

By Ophelie Jacobson

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    MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa (KCCI) — Tuesday was Maggie Tiger’s 75th birthday, but she says it’s too hot to celebrate her special day this year. Instead, she and her husband spent the day sitting in front of fans and wiping the sweat off their foreheads.

That’s because Maggie Tiger and her husband, Allen Tiger, have been living in their mobile home without central air conditioning since Saturday.

“You ever been in a sauna? That’s what it feels like,” Allen Tiger said. “I’m just tired of it.”

The Tigers say they’ve called maintenance at Marshalltown Estates Mobile Home Park multiple times to fix the issue since their electricity went out late Saturday evening. Temperatures in their home reached 95 degrees when KCCI was there.

The couple has a window AC unit in their bedroom so they can sleep comfortably at night. But because of that, they aren’t using their CPAP machines because they’re afraid having both plugged in at the same time will overwork the system.

“I’d rather be cool than have the CPAP machine on, and my wife feels the same way,” Allen Tiger said.

Allen Tiger has multiple health issues. Athena Valdez, a close friend and neighbor of the couple, says it angers her to see them living this way.

“I’m afraid that one of these days, I’m going to walk through these doors and one of them is not going to be breathing,” Valdez said.

KCCI spoke with a lawyer for Augustine Property Management, the company that manages the mobile home park. That lawyer, Ferd Neimann, said someone was at the home on Sunday to take a look at the issue. He said the outlet in their bedroom was overblown, which broke the circuit.

“He offered to put an additional breaker into their bedroom, but that would require them moving their personal belongings away from the wall to create space for a different outlet,” Neimann said. “First phone call we got was today that the home is out of power and has been since Saturday evening, which is patently false. And he went over there again to try to fix it today and was not let in there.”

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