Tenants frustrated after more than 2 months without a working heating system in Anchorage apartment complex

At Romig Court, an Anchorage apartment complex with 29 units at the edge of Spenard, the heat has been broken since Oct. 2.

That’s when residents got a notice that the two boilers pumping heat into people’s apartments were down but would be repaired within a week, according to a copy of the letter provided by a tenant.

“Life goes on,” shrugged Bob Mentzer, 71, as two tiny kittens, Flip and Princess, lay in a towel beside a space heater in his kitchen.

Anchorage’s stock of multifamily housing, where a lot of people without much money tend to live, is aging and degrading. Romig Court is one such case. Problems compound when routine upkeep is neglected and repairs ignored. That can eventually render homes so dangerous or unlivable that city building inspectors say they face the difficult choice of trying to compel property owners to fix them or order them to vacate the premises, putting tenants out on the street with few other options.

Mentzer has lived in various apartments at Romig Court since about 1989, at times working as the property’s maintenance man. He’s since retired but keeps all his tools handy in a ground-level apartment at the quiet end of an alley that he shares with his “too many” cats.

The company that owns the property, Red Tail Residential, is headquartered in California and rents homes in 24 states. In addition to Romig Court, they own five other rental properties in the municipality, a mix of apartments and townhomes.

Mentzer says that while he doesn’t have too many complaints about Red Tail, they didn’t heed his warnings about the failing boiler system — which, he said, has “been here longer than I have.”

“They just failed to do that,” he said. “This isn’t California. They don’t have to deal with our winters.”

Other tenants are more frustrated with Red Tail, saying the prolonged lack of heat follows a consistent lack of maintenance and responsiveness to residents’ issues.

“This heat thing is just the latest bullshit from this company,” said Michael Feign, who has lived at Romig Court for six years.

Prior to Red Tail’s purchase of the property in 2022, Feign said, the building was owned by a local and managed well. Repairs were handled promptly; tenants looked out for the place and took a neighborly approach to the grounds.

“We had a patch of strawberries, a patch of raspberries, a patch of blueberries. We were a community type of place before they took over,” Feign said.

Since Red Tail’s acquisition, he said, there have been significant flooding and plumbing problems that grew worse from a lack of quick resolution, and it’s difficult to get ahold of anyone at the company to take care of issues big or small. After tenants were told in October that the boilers had stopped working, the company dropped off space heaters to help keep units warm as winter closed in. By November, when temperatures in Anchorage got down to around 0 degrees, the electrical heaters were still the only option.

Though two or three portable heaters will bring each compact apartment up to a comfortable temperature, the complex was built in 1952 and the electrical system is not equipped to handle dozens of them running around the clock. On cold days, when they need to go to work or run errands, residents have to chose between leaving a unit running unattended or coming back to a cold home. Feign, a mechanic, said the situation troubles him.

“I’m looking at the amperage draw ... these apartments can’t handle it,” he said. “I worry about fires and stuff like that.”

State and local fire officials regularly issue warnings about the fire dangers posed by space heaters and relying on other unconventional sources like ovens and hot plates to keep homes warm. But leaving buildings to chill brings problems of its own.

“They didn’t put a heater in the laundry room,” Feign said, “so all of our water lines froze in the laundry room.”

Red Tail did not respond to multiple messages requesting an interview. Reached by phone Monday, a representative for the company said, “We have no comment,” and hung up.

Two other tenants contacted for this story shared accounts similar to Feign’s experience, but both declined to speak on the record because of concerns it would affect their housing status.

Fed up, Feign called city building inspectors at the end of November to file a complaint about the persistent lack of heat in the apartments.

“This isn’t the first problem that Red Tail has had. They’ve had some structural and cleanliness issues as well,” said Lucas Cleek, one of the municipality’s code abatement inspectors.

Cleek said when he got in touch with a facilities manager for Red Tail in November, he was told the company was “doing everything they can to correct the issue” with the downed boiler. But, he added, he found it unacceptable that things had degraded to such a point.

“They should have done their homework, they should have known what they were up against,” Cleek said. “They’re not particularly familiar with the climate we have up here.”

While every year there are instances of multifamily apartment buildings in Anchorage losing heat, Cleek said that going more than two months without fixing the problem is exceptional.

“Typically it’s not on this scale,” he said.

Alaska’s state laws covering landlord and tenant protections include provisions that owners must provide essential services such as “hot water, heat, sanitary facilities.” But residents have limited recourse if that isn’t upheld. Options basically come down to moving elsewhere, taking a landlord to small claims court, or spending money to live someplace else like a hotel and then trying to “recover the amount by which the actual and reasonable cost exceeds rent.”

But, said Feign, most of his neighbors at Romig Court are working class or low-income. Not only would it be difficult for them to sue a large national company, but many do not have the money to decamp to a hotel or go out and find another apartment in Anchorage’s constricted rental market.

“There’s no alternative for the folks who live in these places without heat. Where else are you going to go in this town?” asked Scott Campbell, the city’s chief of inspections at the Development Services Department.

Campbell said he’s frustrated when the owners of multifamily buildings don’t have a plan for maintenance to keep small problems from growing into catastrophic failures. One pattern he’s observed with some big out-of-state companies is that layers of corporate bureaucracy create a drawn-out process for approving repairs, leaving tenants waiting.

“They try to fix things, but always at the last minute,” he said. “It makes no sense to us that if someone’s without heat, you don’t just go down with a credit card and get it going.”

The other issue, Campbell added, is that when it comes to even the most flagrant code violators and neglectful landlords, local officials have few tools to compel them to make their properties safe and habitable. Code enforcement can issue fines for violations, and if they keep accruing, eventually place a lien on the property. If there’s still no response, then the penalties go over to debt collections.

But if inspectors deem a building so unsafe it has to be shut down, it risks putting all the tenants out on the street with few options for where to go.

On Dec. 2, city officials issued a notice of violation for Romig Court, fining Red Tail $500 a day until the heating is fixed. As of Monday, Feign and Mentzer said, work vans were on site dealing with the boilers, though heat was not yet restored.

Mentzer said he hadn’t heard anything about reduced rent to compensate tenants for the two months they didn’t have working heat. But he was hoping the owners would be taking care of the increased electric bills incurred from so many space heaters being run over the last two months.

“I can’t afford it,” he said. “I’m on a fixed income.”