Andreatta: At Southview Towers, baby, it's cold inside as icicles form in apartments

Editor's note: Within hours of this column being posted online Friday, Jan. 5, crews were at Southview attempting to fix some of the problems. ​​​​​​This column was also updated to reflect information provided by the Rochester Housing Authority that was not available when the column was first published online. 

Life has never been warm to tenants of Southview Towers, but the conditions in Vonjlay Kendrick’s apartment these frigid days leave one to wonder how cold it can get.

As for Kendrick, she’s freezing. One look at the windows of her third-floor apartment and it’s easy to see why. The interior panes are encrusted in ice.

“I’ve got icicles in here,” Kendrick, 67, said. “That ice is supposed to be outside.”

One icicle, as thick as a quarter and 5 inches long, clung to the pane above a steel-grated heater that showed no sign of life.

More:D&C column prompts emergency fixes: Repairs started at chilly Rochester high-rise

A thermometer had shown it was 48 degrees in her apartment before Kendrick did what so many other Southview Towers tenants do to heat their places —  turn on the oven and open the door. The practice violates their leases, but they’re desperate.

Icicles aren’t unique to Kendrick’s apartment. Drafty windows and weak heat are hallmarks of Southview Towers, a 193-unit high-rise in Rochester’s South Wedge neighborhood serving poor, elderly and disabled residents since 1973.

Monthly rent runs from $575 to $692, and most units are subsidized by the federal Section 8 housing program. The maximum annual income limit for a single tenant is $29,160.

On the fourth floor is John Conner. He’s 59 years old and hearing-impaired. Yet even with his disability he can hear the wind whistling through his windows, the interior seams of which are caked in thick ice.

Even if he couldn’t hear the wind, he could see its effect. The curtains in his apartment sway, slow dancing to the high-pitched hum of winter. Tissue paper he stuffed in the cracks was frozen solid and flaked like ice chips.

Heat is included in the rent. As far as Conner or anyone else can tell, though, the thermostat on his wall barely works. There was no way the temperature in Conner’s one-bedroom unit was at the state legal threshold of 68 degrees for apartment buildings this time of year.

None of the thermostats in any of the units at Southview Towers has a thermometer. They’re dials with numbers 1 to 5. Conner’s was cranked to 5, but his heater was cold to the touch. He might’ve used his oven for heat, but his oven was broken, just like the lock on his door.

Perhaps the absence of heat was why the puddle, 6 feet in diameter in the middle of his living room carpet, was still sopping wet. Conner said a pipe burst in the wall more than a week earlier. That got fixed, but the water stayed.

Black, hairy spots the size of dimes dotted the wall. His living quarters smelled like a musty cellar.

It is hard to imagine living quarters with icicles passing inspection, which the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires of Section 8 units annually. Among the items on the checklist are window condition and heat.

John Hill, executive director of the Rochester Housing Authority, the local agency responsible for Section 8 inspections, said 130 units at Southview Towers fall under the Section 8 program and that all of them are inspected every year.

He said it is not uncommon for inspections to find deficiencies, but that RHA inspectors follow up to ensure the landlord corrects them.

Hill added that RHA has not received any complaints about heat at Southview Towers, but said the Housing Authority would begin inspecting all 130 units starting Monday given the images of ice inside some apartments.

City code inspectors examine apartment buildings as a matter of course every three years to determine whether the properties are eligible for a renewed certificate of occupancy.

A City Hall spokeswoman said the certificate of occupancy for Southview Towers was issued in 2014 and that the building is scheduled to be inspected again next week.

Tenants with icicles said they’ve complained to the property manager, Landsman Development Corp., about their living conditions but that their complaints, particularly about the windows and heat, have gone unaddressed.

"We've reported it so many times," said Stan Evans, 39, who lives on the 10th floor with icy windows and was using his oven for heat. "They keep saying they're going to do something, but they don't.

"I like the place all right," he added. "They just need to do something about the heat."

The thermometer on the thermostat in the common hallway on his floor was bottomed out at 50 degrees, and it felt colder. 

Every complaint theoretically generates a work order, and Jim Goff, the chief executive officer at Landsman, said the company tries to respond to every one.

He acknowledged, however, that some orders go unfilled because they call for repairs that the company can’t finance without help from the state and federal government in the form of tax credits.

“I think this is a drafty building because of the windows and I think in these temperatures it’s a big problem,” Goff said. “We agree the windows are a mess and they need to be replaced, but my hands are tied because this (building) is a state tax credit project.”

State and federal tax credits are the primary vehicle for financing affordable housing developments. The tax credits are bought up by groups of investors, government-sponsored entities and banks.

Buildings funded by these arrangements, like Southview Towers, are required by law to abide by affordable housing guidelines for at least 15 years. But these arrangements can present challenges, particularly with restructuring debt and maintenance.

By the end of the 15 years, many buildings need significant repairs that the owners are reluctant or unable to cover without a refinancing deal due to the high costs of rehabilitation in relation to the value of the property. Many projects barely break even.

A survey of tax-credit funded properties by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that about a third of them needed “substantial repairs” by Year 15 but just 3 percent of owners had the money to carry them out.

This is where Southview Towers finds itself today.

Goff said Landsman has been waiting for state approval for over a year on a $14 million deal to rehab Southview Towers with new windows and plumbing and upgraded kitchens and bathrooms. He said he was hopeful the project would get the greenlight by spring.

He added that Landsman has put “a ton of money” into the building that it can’t afford, including in elevators and plumbing, but did so because the tenants needed it

“Do I want to do it tomorrow? If I could, I would,” Goff said. “This isn’t just us as a landlord. It’s an entire system of tax credit investments.”

None of that is the problem of Southview Towers tenants, though.

Their problem is they’re cold.

David Andreatta is a Democrat and Chronicle columnist. He can be reached at dandreatta@gannett.com.