A Chicago landlord who refused to turn off the furnace in a building where three women died of heat exposure in 2021 is paying $16 million to the late tenants’ families in a settlement.
Landlord Gateway Apartments and property manager Hispanic Housing Development Corp. agreed to settle a lawsuit from the families of Gwendolyn Osborne, Janice Reed and Delores McNeely after they were found dead of heat exposure inside their apartments at the James Sneider senior apartments at 7450 North Rogers Avenue in Rogers Park in May 2021, Block Club Chicago reported.
Officials found that residents had complained about the rising temperatures in their units, but the landlord declined to turn the heat off.
“Had the defendants used common sense and turned the heat off and the air conditioning on, these ladies would not have died,” attorney Larry Rogers Jr., who is representing the Reed family, said in a statement. “Corporate greed that puts profits over people is what led to the deaths of these three ladies.”
The $16 million will be distributed evenly to the three families.
First responders found the women on May 14, during a record-breaking heatwave. The temperature inside McNeely’s apartment was 103 degrees when she was found deceased. The Chicago Fire Department had to cool off the building by ventilating it and blowing in cool air to get the temperature back down to a livable level.
Property manager Hispanic Housing Development said at the time that it couldn’t turn the heat off due to the city’s heating ordinance. Ald. Maria Hadden, who also reached out to the building’s managers to turn on the air conditioning, to no avail, said the city’s heating ordinance requires landlords to keep their buildings at least 68 degrees between Sept. 1 and June 1, but doesn’t require the heater to be on.
In response to the incident and the building manager’s claims, Hadden drafted a change to the city’s heating and cooling laws to include explicit requirements for lowering temperatures and running cooling systems when it gets too hot. The City Council approved the changes in June.
“There is no excuse for apartment owners or managers to ignore cries for help from their tenants, especially when their main clientele is the elderly,” Brian L. Salvi, an attorney representing McNeely’s family, said.
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— Victoria Pruitt