Power outage at South Side CHA building leaves older residents in frigid temps for hours

Etta Davis, 70, counts herself lucky.

The Dearborn Homes resident could have asked her son to pick her up from the Chicago Housing Authority building where she lives Saturday — a frigid day that saw the coldest temps since January. Eight of the 16 apartment buildings in the Douglas housing development went without power more than seven hours that day.

The 668-unit public housing development has been the subject of controversy and complaints regarding unsanitary and unsafe conditions, but last weekend was the worst heating issue Davis had ever experienced in her 30 years in the building, she said.

“We basically just stayed in our apartments,” said Davis, vice president of the building’s advisory council. “If the lights and heat did not go back on by a certain time, then I was gonna have my son pick me up, but everybody doesn't have the same advantage.”

On Saturday, temperatures crept as high as 24 degrees and hit as low as 14.

Davis said about one-third of Dearborn’s residents are seniors. She estimates the power outage affected about 325 residents in eight buildings.

Davis contacted ComEd when the power first went off, around 3 p.m. The electric utility told her they had done what they could on their end. Davis said it was difficult to get any answers from the building's management.

A CHA statement said ComEd restored the power around 10:45 p.m. "CHA’s private property managers, working in partnership with the City of Chicago, made warming buses and community rooms available to residents and went door-to-door to notify people and conduct well-being checks."

However, many residents in the affected buildings say they were never checked on and were not informed of any warming centers or community rooms.

Valeria Lenior, 51, was watching television when she noticed her home getting cold.

"I just got under the covers. I was just laying there waiting the whole day, and no one came by," she said.

“No one came to my house, and I’m 70 years old,” Davis added.

According to a ComEd spokesperson, warming buses arrived around 9 p.m., and the community rooms were opened around 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., but "no residents utilized either the community rooms or the warming buses."

Residents and text messages from management the day of tell a different story.

"They didn't do any of that, I didn't hear about any of that," Lenior said.

Brenda Moore, 66, is a building president and a member of the local advisory council. She spent much of Saturday fielding calls from residents complaining about the cold.

She said she didn't hear anything about a wellness check and that she checked in on her residents instead.

Moore said she had an event to attend that evening and left her home around 6:30 p.m.

"I had to get my grandson to help me down the stairs and hold my phone as a flashlight to see because the whole building was pitch black," Moore said.

Throughout her event, Moore said she was bombarded with calls from residents struggling to get out of apartments on higher floors and residents complaining of the cold.

It was 9:26 p.m. when the building manager texted Moore, saying, "FYI, in case residents call you, CHA has a warmer bus coming, and residents can go to (the community room)."

"I told her I had a resident on the fifth floor in a wheelchair and asked how he was supposed to get down there. I got no response," Moore said.

If residents knew about the warming centers, "they probably would've used them," Lenior said.

Residents said they are unsure how low the temperature in their units got, but the Chicago Municipal Code requires the temperature in apartments to be at least 68 degrees from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

The Chicago Tribune reported in August that broken and outdated elevators have been a consistent complaint from CHA residents and housing advocates. Davis said that sometimes an elevator would be down for months. Other residents complained about overflowing garbage and rat infestations.

“We’ve been having an elevator problem, so we’ve been losing residents,” Davis told the Sun-Times. “They’ve placed some seniors with disabilities on these higher floors.

“Because the elevators — some of them have been out for weeks at a time, so residents on higher floors have been missing doctor’s appointments that are vital to their health.”

These are problems she is “still trying to holler and scream about” to CHA leaders, Davis said.

"This is not a first-time issue; this has been going on for a minute. If you say something, they get upset with you," said Moore, who has protested the building's conditions.

Davis told the Sun-Times that Saturday’s lack of heat was the most shocking she’d experienced at the building.

“In the past, we've had power outages, but it usually goes out, and they may pop back on after a little while. We've never had it out for 6½ hours like this before, so this was getting to be a little scary. With the other things that are going on that are already out, it’s getting to be too much.”

Moore did not enjoy her evening out on Saturday, despite paying "good money" for a new dress for the event, she said.

"I could not concentrate because my heart is not like that," she said. "I cannot go somewhere and enjoy being warm, eating, laughing and dancing and have loved ones and friends that I care about freezing. That's not human."