Just in time for the holidays, the heat has been turned back on at an apartment building in Kingston.
Residents like Judy White have been living in cooler temperatures, as their heating system has been broken for months.
“Wow, just fantastic,” said White, as she was feeling the heat finally pumping out of her radiator.
Only a day before, they were huddled in blankets and using space heaters provided by the property management group, to try and manage the frigid weather in their homes. Residents reached out to Global News, voicing their concerns about the issue.
It was just hours after our story aired, they said, that the heating was fixed.
“When I saw the trucks out there, I said halleluiah,” White said.
Within a few hours, White says the heat was back on by early afternoon.
WATCH: Residents speaking out after dealing with colder temperatures in their own home.
“Hopefully it’s coincidental,” said Angus MacDougall, another resident in the building.
The company responsible for the building, Briar Lane Property Management, took over in May, leaving residents to ask why they didn’t notice a problem.
“Why wait for the middle of the winter to find out the heat is no good in the building and then start the work and let us suffer?” White said.
Before it was repaired, residents say they were living in temperatures well below 15 degrees Celsius. “We were seeing temperatures of 54, 55, 56 degrees Fahrenheit,” White said.
According to the Residential Tenancies Act, landlords must keep the temperature at a minimum of 20 degrees between the months of September and June.
Residents say this was after several months of going back and forth with the property management group. In a phone call with Global News, an official with the company claimed it was a process that was going to take time, with parts needed in order to repair the older system. They went on to say it was an ongoing problem, since they took ownership of the property.
With the heat turned back on, residents are now hoping to get a partial refund on their rent. It’s not clear if the company will honour their requests, but residents are hopeful they can help them outside of the Landlord Tenant Board.