Portage Township Trustee Jason Critchlow and the Indiana Attorney General are turning up the heat on the owner and manager of the Karl King Tower senior apartments highrise in South Bend. The moves come as it’s expected to get even colder this weekend.
Critchlow on Tuesday released a letter that the township’s attorney has sent to the building’s Indianapolis-based owner and New Jersey-based manager, Treetop Companies. It says they’ve known for at least six weeks that residents of the 12-story, 219-unit building were experiencing a complete lack of heat, along with broken or wholly unreliable elevators and numerous other safety, health, and sanitation issues. Yet Critchlow says the problems remain.
The letter threatens legal action if they don’t fix the problems within a reasonable timeline, compensate residents, pay restitution to the township for rent assistance it’s given tenants, and agree to be monitored for three years.
Also the attorney general’s Homeowner Protection Unit is investigating Critchlow’s consumer complaint. The two offices took a similar approach two years ago at the Cedar Glen Apartments.
Temperatures were forecast to stay below freezing Tuesday and Wednesday, then get even colder with lows of three degrees on Thursday, minus three Friday and zero on Saturday.
