Broken water heaters leave 280 public housing residents without hot water

About 280 residents living at the Chelsea Apartments, a public housing complex, are without hot water.

“Tuesday night, two water boilers went down,” said Housing Authority spokesperson Javier Camacho.

Replacement parts from California are needed to repair the heaters.

“There’s no company in the city that makes those parts. We actually had to find a company which is in California that will actually fabricate the part and ship it to us,” Camacho said.

The housing Authority has installed portable showers. “We have six of them on site and they can bathe whenever they want between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.,” Camacho said.

The Housing Authority also arranged shower accessibility for handicapped residents.

“We are transporting them to a local hotel where they have those types of showers like roll-in where they have two hours each to shower,” Camacho said.

One resident told ABC-7 the situation hasn’t been too inconvenient but others don’t agree.

“Even though it’s 50 degrees outside, you finish taking a shower in hot water you come outside you’re going to be cold.” said one resident that wished to remain anonymous.

The resident wishes they could of moved the portable showers a little closer to the building and asked for more communication about the shuttle to the hotel showers.

“What shuttle? I’ve been in and out of this building the last few hours and I haven’t seen a shuttle. I put myself on a list and no one has called me,” the resident said.

Camacho told ABC-7 they have had two meetings in the complex about the shower issues and added they will continue informing residents about the portable and hotel showers.

The water heaters are expected to be working by Thursday morning.