Angry tenants voice complaints at CH Village
Residents upset by utility bills and safety issues.
by Joel Hoffmann

Chestnut Hill Village tenant Thomas Lind organized a meeting of disgruntled tenants. (Photo by Joel Hoffmann)

They stood almost 140 strong, most crammed shoulder-to-shoulder in the Chestnut Hill Village clubhouse common room, some spilling out into the hallway.

Their anger had been mounting for months. They had strength in numbers now, and they were demanding to be heard.

They had come to protest inflated utility bills, rodent visits and lingering safety concerns. Resident after resident expressed outrage toward the apartment complex’s management group, Denver-based AIMCO, and its third-party utility billing contractor, Tampa-based Ista North America.

Hands raised around the room when organizer Thomas Lind asked them if they had seen two- and threefold increases in their utility bills over the past year. 

Many said they had kept the thermostat at 55 to avoid high utility bills, but were still overcharged by Ista, which they said was two months behind on its billing cycle and uncooperative when asked to explain the charges.

Before the meeting, Ruby Benton, 84, said the most recent utility bill for her one-bedroom apartment added up to $333 even though she could barely get the heat in her apartment to work through the winter.

“I would turn it up to 90, but I still wouldn’t get any heat,” she said.

Although the hallway outside her apartment felt like a greenhouse, it was lukewarm inside. She had left the thermostat at 75 all day to prove her point.

Benton mentioned that the electronic utility meter in her dining room had burned out and was incapable of sending usage data to Ista.

She described the baseboard heaters running below the windows – the same heating system that was in place when she first moved to Chestnut Hill Village 11 years ago – as old and faulty.

Benton had lived in a different building until last fall, but said she was told to vacate the complex or move into a more expensive apartment. Though Benton was quiet at the residents’ meeting, her concerns were voiced by many others.

A few residents even alleged that Ista representatives had accused them of “tricking the system.”

Residents’ utility bills show that they are being charged a $3.28 service fee by Ista as well as fluctuating fees for “base energy” and electric usage.

Nora Myers, an AIMCO representative, was on hand to respond to residents’ concerns.

“We do hear you,” she said. “That’s why we did go to Ista.”

Myers said that AIMCO and Ista executives would address residents concerns more fully at a meeting on either April 22 or April 23.

She said that Ista and AIMCO were working together to sort out the billing issues, and that Ista executives had agreed to give residents credits for overcharges, but she conceded that residents would see another high utility bill this month for February.

“The utility bills have to be paid,” she said.

Though the residents were angry about their utility bills, their disgust was more evident as they discussed rodents in their kitchens and uncomfortable, sometimes frightening run-ins with a few of the residents of a transitional housing program with lodgings spread throughout Chestnut Hill Village.

Many residents said they were just learning about the transitional housing program, Project Transition, for the first time. Many were also surprised to learn that 30 apartments were reserved each semester for students at Antonelli Institute, a Flourtown-based photography school.

“There needs to be better supervision of these groups,” Lind said.

He demanded that AIMCO let residents know what rules those groups must abide by, and he suggested that the groups should each receive their own building instead of being integrated with the rest of the community.

Myers said that other residents are not warned of it in advance because “we can’t discriminate.” She said, “it’s a privacy issue".

“Lind and his fellow residents were not satisfied with responses from Myers, Village service manager Dominic Delicci and complex managers Alicia Waters and Mariangela Lerario.

“We are being treated like cattle,” Lind said. “How dare they say we will be getting another high bill this week.”

The residents voted unanimously to form a tenants’ association.

Lind said on Sunday that no credits had been applied to residents’ utilities accounts. Waters declined to sit down for a face-to-face interview on Friday and did not respond to e-mailed questions about the residents’ concerns and allegations by deadline.