Sophie has been wearing it for over a week a t-shirt, a sweater and a fleece on top. Winter is coming and the resident of the Plan district, in Valence, still has no heating in her apartment located on the 6th floor of a building belonging to Valence Romans Habitat. The operator who manages 10,000 HLM housing units says he is aware of the problem and promises that everything will be resolved by the end of the week. But Sophie assures that this situation happens to her every year.
“Look, touch, it’s completely frozen”comments the tenant, placing her hand on one of her radiators. Whether in your living room, bedroom, kitchen, or bathroom, all the radiators are cold.
15 degrees in the morning
“We feel very bad, we don’t want to wash, undress”describes the 52-year-old woman. In her room, she put a large blanket on her bed. When she gets up, it is 15 degrees in her apartment. The temperature rises to 17 degrees in the afternoon if there is sunshine who taps on his windows. Sophie gets angry: “We are taken for animals, I think there are dogs in some houses who are hotter than us.”
The resident claims to have informed Valence Romans Habitat and the service provider who manages the heating. After seeing that she was not alone in this situation, she posted a petition in the lobby of the building. Around fifteen people signed in one day: residents of the 3rd, 4th, 5th floor. One of Sophie's neighbors, Hanan, is at her wit's end: “We end up coughing, having headaches, being cold. No matter how much we complain, make phone calls, nothing gets done.”
“We intervene as quickly as possible”
Contacted, Valence Romans Habitat explains that the phenomenon is classic during this period. When restarting the heating, need to purge especially for apartments located at the top of buildings, because there is air in the pipes. This year it was made worse by the sudden drop in temperatures. According to the director of customers and territories, Yann Sechi, these heating problems affect approximately 100 housing units out of 10,000 managedparticularly in the Plan and Fontbarlettes districts.
But Yann Sechi assures that Valence Romans Habitat has set up a monitoring unit and that the service providers are in the process of carrying out purges in the buildings concerned. “We intervene as quickly as possible. We don’t leave tenants for days without heating,” he says. Valence Romans Habitat promises that the situation will be resolved everywhere by the end of the week.
