Apartment tenants want compensation from landlord after living without heat for three weeks

Tenants in a West Broadway apartment building say they want their landlord to make them “whole again” after they went without heat for weeks over the holidays and into the middle of this month.

According to tenants who spoke with the Free Press Tuesday, heat at 641 and 645 Westminster went out on Boxing Day and was not fully restored until last Friday.

The conjoined apartment building has six suites at 645 Westminster and eight at 641, and was littered with empty boxes of space heaters that were used in an effort to manage the situation.

They say they are now looking to Thorwin Properties — which also manages 875 Westminster, where heat has still not been restored after more than two weeks — to make up for weeks of cold nights and concerns about soaring hydro bills.

“My partner and I spent New Year’s Eve huddled in our bedroom with our jackets on, just watching a movie,” said one tenant, who did not want to be identified. “Basically, our whole apartment was unlivable.”

The man said he and his partner went to stay with his mother before any space heaters arrived.

He said tenants went four days without any communication from Thorwin. After the heat went out on Boxing Day, a Friday, residents contacted the city’s bylaw office by Sunday. A bylaw officer visited the building the following day and found temperatures well below required standards.

The day after the bylaw officer’s visit, the tenant said, Thorwin finally emailed residents and delivered small space heaters.

“It got down to five degrees in my apartment,” the man said, adding the space heaters raised the temperature in his bedrooms only to about 15 C.

Landlords are responsible for ensuring temperatures in rental units meet minimum requirements.

Under the City of Winnipeg’s Neighbourhood Liveability Bylaw, rental properties must maintain a minimum temperature of 21 C during the day (7 a.m.-11 p.m.) and at least 18 C overnight (11 p.m.-7 a.m.).

The bylaw requires heating systems to be maintained in a safe and good working condition.

It wasn’t until Thorwin supplied residents with industrial heaters that tenants were able to reach those temperatures, the man said. But because the heaters required the use of the stove plug-in receptacle, he was unable to heat his apartment while cooking. Running multiple heaters also eventually blew a fuse, cutting power for several hours.

“So then we were scared to run the big heater, and we woke up the next day and it was cold as s—t again,” he said.

A Thorwin Properties official did not respond to a request for comment.

“That’s the thing I really want to stress,” the man said. “This building is really old, boilers go out, but the fact that there’s been such poor communication for the whole thing, the fact that we didn’t get any communication from the landlord until we after contacted the city by-law officer.

“People in this building have pets, some of us have children, this has been really stressful on us all. The whole time the heat was out we have still had to pay our rent even though we couldn’t live normally in our apartments. We’re hoping that Thorwin will do the right thing and provide the residents of this building with refunds that reflect this reality.”

In an email to residents dated Jan. 2, Thorwin said a replacement boiler part needed to be shipped from Ontario and was expected to arrive Jan. 5 or 6. A followup email on Jan. 6 pushed the expected arrival to Jan. 9. On Jan. 13, residents were told that while repairs were made using the new part, another leak had been discovered, requiring additional work.

The heat was finally restored last Friday, Jan. 16.

“We sincerely apologize for the continued inconvenience and appreciate your patience and understanding as the contractors work to resolve this matter as quickly and safely as possible,” the email said.

Courtney, who lives in the same building and declined to give her last name, said she hopes Thorwin will do the right thing and, at a minimum, help cover increased hydro costs for January.

“It’s been a letdown,” she said, detailing a previous incident where part of her roof caved in, which she claimed took months to fully repair, and led to further issues for other residents in the building.

“I just feel like morally, anybody who is an employee of Thorwin, if they lived through this experience themselves, they’d be very upset themselves. So I feel like any sort of regular compensation would be some sort of rent compensation, perhaps, or like a credit that we could apply across to our rent or our high hydro, as we wish, to kind of make us feel whole again.”

She said she lives with her daughter, and attempts to heat both bedrooms repeatedly tripped the breaker. She said was already considering moving before the heat outage, but described the situation as the final straw.

“It’s been really crap,” she said. “I haven’t been able to work properly, or even leave for too long. I’ve had to manage when I leave during the day. And we really can’t even hang out in here, because playing a video game or just watching TV, it just constantly blows the breaker.”

Meanwhile, heat has yet to be restored at 875 Westminster, another Thorwin-managed property. The complex, which has eight residential units and two commercial spaces, has been without heat since Jan. 4.

In an email to tenants last week, Thorwin said the boiler was shut down due to high carbon dioxide readings. A boiler consultant was brought in Jan. 9 to conduct an assessment, the company said.

Despite several repairs between Jan. 12 and 14, problems persisted. Thorwin told tenants further combustion analysis took place last Thursday in an effort to identify the issue, but a permanent solution has yet to be determined.

The Residential Tenancies Branch said Tuesday it has received only one complaint related to the building.

“On Jan. 19, late in the day, the Residential Tenancies Branch (RTB) received a telephone call regarding 875 Westminster Ave. in Winnipeg,” an email from the province said. “The tenant expressed concern that the landlord was entering the unit without providing proper notice, although the purpose of the entry was to address a heating issue.”

Tenants at 645 Westminster told a similar story.

“Speaking with the other tenants, it sounds like they entered a number of units here early Saturday morning without giving notice in order to retrieve the… construction heaters, presumably to take to the other building,” one tenant at 645 Westminster said.

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca