D&C column prompts emergency fixes: Repairs started at chilly Rochester high-rise
After the Democrat and Chronicle documented a lack of heat and other problems at a Rochester high-rise, the owner began emergency repairs.
D&C column prompts emergency fixes: Repairs started at chilly Rochester high-rise After the Democrat and Chronicle documented a lack of heat and other problems at a Rochester high-rise, the owner began emergency repairs. Check out this story on DemocratandChronicle.com: http://on.rocne.ws/2CITER3
Steve Orr and Meaghan M. McDermott, Democrat and Chronicle Published 4:11 p.m. ET Jan. 5, 2018 | Updated 10:32 p.m. ET Jan. 5, 2018
Residents at Southview Towers on South Avenue in Rochester fight cold inside apartments. (Jan. 4, 2018) Shawn Dowd and David Andreatta
Southview Towers apartments on South Avenue in Rochester on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2018.(Photo: SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/, SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/staff pho)
Emergency repairs began Friday at a Rochester high-rise apartment building, hours after online publication of a Democrat and Chronicle column documenting a lack of heat and other problems there.
Tenants at Southview Towers told D&C columnist David Andreatta about inadequate or nonexistent heat, broken windows and door locks, mold and a host of other problems.
The 193-unit affordable housing tower in the South Wedge is owned by Brighton-based Landsman Development Corp. The company has owned the 17-story building since 2000.
Andreatta: At Southview Towers, baby, it's cold inside as icicles form in apartments
Landsman representatives were indeed at the building Friday making fixes, putting plastic over leaky windows and providing residents in chilly apartments with space heaters, said Kawanais Smith, president of the Southview Towers tenants association.
"I think they're responding to the public pressure," she said. "They're embarrassed. But we shouldn't have to go to the media to get habitable conditions in our apartments."
However, James Goff, president and CEO of Landsman, said the company had not heard complaints from individual tenants about a lack of heat until Andreatta's column ran.
"We are not the slumlords we're made out to be here," he said. "Not having heat in any apartment is unacceptable and that is not how we run this company, but if I don't know about it, I can't fix it."
Southview Terrace apartment dips below 50 degrees
Kawanais Smith, president of the tenants' association at Southview Towers, looks out the iced windows of a resident's apartment onto South Avenue in Rochester Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018. SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/, SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/staff pho
Black mold grows on the wall in John Conner's living room at Southview Towers apartments on South Avenue in Rochester onTuesday, Jan. 2, 2018. Conner has icicles forming on the inside of his windows and black mold growing on his living room wall. SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/, SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/staff pho
Kawanais Smith, president of the tenants' association at Southview Towers in Rochester, examines the kitchen of an apartment on Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018. Many tenants in the complex have little heat and use their ovens to warm their apartments. SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/, SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/staff pho
Kawanais Smith at the iced windows of another tenants apartment at Southview Terrace apartments on South Avenue in Rochester Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018. SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/, SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/staff pho
Southview Towers apartments on South Avenue in Rochester on Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2018. SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/, SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/staff pho
John Conner at the window in his apartment at Southview Towers apartments on South Avenue in Rochester Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018. John has icicles forming on the inside of his windows, and black mold growing on his living room wall. SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/, SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/staff pho
Southview Towers apartments on South Avenue in Rochester Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2018. SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/, SHAWN DOWD/@sdowdphoto/staff pho
Landsman workers inspected all 193 apartments in Southview Towers on Friday, Goff said. Residents were asked to unplug their space heaters and make sure their ovens were off so company representatives could get accurate indoor temperature readings.
In all, 13 of the apartments had temperatures below 70 degrees, and two had readings in the high 50s, Goff said. None of the units were without heat, although many did have icing on the windows, which Goff attributed to the windows being aluminum-framed, uninsulated and more than four decades old.
"We're putting space heaters in all the units that are below 70 and we called our HVAC company in to find out why in the world an apartment in this building would have no heat," he said, adding that the building's boilers were replaced in 2016.
"We are not going to leave there tonight until everyone has appropriate levels of heat," he said.
Rochester building officials, who also said they had heard nothing about Southview Towers heating complaints until they read Andreatta's column, visited the building Friday morning to find a group of Landsman employees already present.
"There was a large contingent of staff there going door to door," said Gary Kirkmire, the city's director of buildings and zoning. "They were looking at all issues, but primarily were focused on heat."
Kirkmire said he expected the company to address serious deficiencies by the time city officials appear for a previously scheduled inspection on Monday and Tuesday.
"They're charged with giving us a complete report on their assessment, and we're going to be going through the entire building," Kirkmire said. "I would expect they would fix anything they come across, certainly anything dealing with health and safety, before then."
Goff told Andreatta several days ago that the company had planned major renovations at Southview Towers but was waiting for state-supported financing to help pay for it.
On Friday afternoon, Goff said the project had been in the works for more than a year, but uncertainty over tax-credit programs made it difficult to secure financing until recently. Late last year, the company submitted an application to the state's Homes and Community Renewal agency seeking approval for a $14 million renovation project at Southview, which company officials hope will be approved this spring.
Goff said the planned repairs include a full replacement of the building's plumbing, a new roof, upgraded kitchens and bathrooms, new sidewalks, new stairwell and exterior doors, new interior doors, a front entry and vestibule and security cameras.
"I am on the side of our residents, who deserve new windows, doors and kitchens," he said. "They deserve a great place to live."
Charni Sochet, spokeswoman for Housing and Community Renewal, said the agency is reviewing the formal application Landsman submitted on Dec. 21. She said the agency confirmed the application fee on Friday.
In the interim, she said, Landsman "is responsible for ensuring the health and safety of its tenants, and is required to have financial reserves to provide for necessary repairs and financial viability of operations. The owner is obligated to access reserves to address building needs for adequate services including heat."
Earlier this week, city building officials shut down a small apartment building on Dewey Avenue because of problems with lack of heat. Kirkmire said that action was taken because the owner, identified as Rochester Asset Management, had failed to fix the problem.
By contrast, Landsman was addressing its building's shortcomings on Friday, so there was no need for the city to step in and order the premises vacated, he said.
The city inspects Southview Towers, as it does other multifamily rental units, when its certificate of occupancy is up for renewal every three years. That's the inspection scheduled for Monday and Tuesday.
Kirkmire said inspectors also visited the building last year in response to a complaint from tenants last year about a rodent infestation. That matter was resolved.
The Southview complex also is supposed to be inspected annually by the Rochester Housing Authority.
On Friday, RHA Executive Director John Hill said his agency oversees 130 Section 8 apartment units in Southview Tower, or about 67 percent of the total. And, those apartments are indeed inspected annually on the anniversary date of move-in.
When deficiencies are found, he said, they must be corrected. Emergency deficiencies must be fixed within 24 hours and less serious deficiencies must be corrected within 30 days.
"And we double-check," said Hill.
He said RHA has no record of tenant complaints about insufficient heating in the building.
Still, in light of the current issues, Hill said RHA would begin inspecting all 130 Section 8 units in the tower beginning next week, a process that could take three weeks to complete.
"We're going to take every precaution we can," he said. "We're on it to the extent we can be at this point.
"It's unusual, but it's cold out there and we don't want people living in these conditions."
A federal inspection report from June 2013, presumably done by RHA, showed multiple problems with the apartment building. That report had been obtained by the newspaper through an open-records request.
The 2013 inspection of a sampling of apartments in the building found 24 health and safety deficiencies, two life-threatening deficiencies and 10 instances of problems with smoke detectors. Among the issues: exposed electrical wires; a non-functioning toilet; missing window screens; holes in the walls; water damage and mold; broken refrigerators; broken stoves; clogged drains; leaky pipes; cracked or broken windows; peeling paint; broken door frames; fire doors that wouldn't close; and broken air conditioning unit.
In multiple apartments, inspectors noted broken thermopane seals in the apartment windows.
Additionally, the report notes that bed bugs were present in two units within Building 1.
At the time of the inspection, 187 of the complex's 193 units were occupied, and inspectors entered 24 of the units to conduct their reviews.
About a third of the buildings had damaged or inoperable ranges or stoves.
Nearly 40 percent of the inspected units had damaged hardware or locks on the doors.
In a third of apartments, windows were non-functioning and could not be locked.
In nearly 40 percent of units, smoke detectors were missing or inoperable.
Numerous fire extinguishers were missing, damaged or expired.
Some units had notable infestations of roaches or other insects.
The federal inspection report did not indicate whether the deficiencies had been repaired.
In October, Smith's tenants group sent a demand letter to Landsman asking the building owners to: fix the heat; fix leaks in the stairwells and clean up mold; fix torn carpeting and peeling, chipped paint in the hallways; regularly clean the dumpsters to keep odors from infiltrating the building; and fix holes in the hallway walls.
Additionally, the tenants asked for security cameras, a secure front access door, 24-hour security, working washers, dryers and change machines and for weekly general cleaning services in the public and community areas of the building.
After gaining no traction with their demands, the tenant's union in late December called a news conference and rally specifically asking Landsman to fix the building's heat and ensure all residents had working locks on their doors.
Andreatta began to look into the building's problems shortly after that.
But Goff said many of those fixes were already in the pipeline, pending approval of the renovation project by the state.
Goff said social media reaction to Andreatta's column was swift and severe. Goff said his office on Friday was inundated with phone calls and emails — some threatening — accusing him and the Landsman Corp. of neglecting basic duties to their tenants.
"No one in our building is going to be without heat," he said. "We're getting these calls, emails, people saying we're animals, we don't care about people and we're more interested in campaign contributions than our tenants.
"But we're passionate about our tenants, and we don't have people living in slums. If people don't call us and tell us the problems, we can't just go in their apartments and start looking."
Still, Smith said Landsman representatives have a history of broken promises.
"They promised to do all these things and never did, now that we went to the media they're falling all over themselves," she said. "I think it's great."
She said the tenant's union plans to keep up the pressure.
"Like I said, I think this follow-up is great, but I'm sure we're going to have other problems."
SORR@Gannett.com
MCDERMOT@Gannett.com
Includes reporting by staff writer David Andreatta.
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