After going without heat for nearly three weeks, about 35 tenants of an Englewood apartment building Monday won a court order that is to result in restored gas heat service by Tuesday afternoon.
Peoples Energy Corp. cut off gas for central heating of the three-story building at 64th Street and South Loomis Boulevard on Jan. 15 because it was supplied from an unauthorized line, according to Peoples’ spokeswoman Desiree Rogers.
The building owner owes about $36,000 for gas from the illicit hookup, plus about $4,000 from an arrearage that led to the termination of authorized service in July 2000, Rogers said.
The mid-January disconnection left the tenants in the 13 occupied units of the 16-unit building to fend for themselves, some by plugging in electric heaters and others by running the ovens and burners of their stoves at full bore, sometimes for 24 hours a day. Gas for cooking in the building is supplied and billed separately, unlike gas for heating, which is included in the rent.
“We’re pretty cold up there,” said Harold Benjamin, clad in a blue winter jacket as he led a visitor up a hallway to the one-bedroom apartment he shares with Sharon Lenox, 24, and their four small children.
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Heat comes from the stove, its burners blazing, and a small white electric heater.
At night, Benjamin, 44, said, all six occupants share a single bed, huddled under five blankets.
On the first floor, Linda Frazier jury-rigged a climate control system for warming her tidy $450-per-month one-bedroom unit: an electric heater in the bedroom where her 2-year-old son, DeAngelo, slept; and a fan in the kitchen to blow air warmed by the stove and humidified by steam from a pot of simmering water.
The stove provided heat only sporadically during an unseasonably mild stretch for much of the last two weeks, but has been turned on high day and night since the weather turned cold in the last few days, Frazier said.
Using a gas stove for heat is dangerous because the appliance’s open flames are a fire hazard and use up oxygen while producing potentially deadly carbon monoxide, according to Chicago Fire Department spokesman Dennis Gault (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
The disconnection highlights a shortcoming in the Illinois Commerce Commission regulation that prohibits a shut off of service for non-payment when weather reaches freezing from Dec. 1 until March 31.
But the prohibition does not apply to shutoffs of unauthorized gas lines, because such connections often are cobbled together haphazardly and are a potential safety hazard, Rogers said. “We found an unsafe condition and we wanted to correct it,” Rogers said.
But in cutting off an illicit connection to a rental property, a gas company is not obligated to provide heat to tenants until any disputes with the landlord about payment are sorted out.
Instead, in Chicago, it’s up to the tenants to go to Housing Court and ask for a receiver to be appointed to take over the business operations of the landlord. Even under emergency circumstances, the process can take several days, said Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city’s corporation counsel.
“There’s no way to get an instant result,” Hoyle said. The corporation counsel’s office first learned of the gas cut-off at the South Loomis property last Tuesday from Illinois ACORN, a community organizing group with an office in Englewood.
Peoples Gas agreed to reconnect the heat Monday after Judge Scott Neville appointed a receiver to manage the property.
Still unclear is who owns the building. The city named three possible owners, Heritage Bank; Sherry Tyler, of Olympia Fields; and Dennis Krall, but the three are locked in a court fight about ownership.
Ald. Shirley Coleman (16th) said she is considering legislation that would require a utility to maintain energy supply for up to 72 hours while receivership details are worked out.
Although it has been a generally mild winter, 15 people in Cook County have died of cold so far this season.