The Edgerton Hi-Rise off Payne Avenue in St. Paul offers subsidized rental housing for more than 220 seniors and disabled single adults. On Sunday morning, all of them woke up cold.

A boiler failure left tenants of the St. Paul Public Housing Authority property huddling for warmth late Saturday until 10 p.m. Sunday, and concerned neighborhood residents scrambling to help.

“I woke up at 2 in the morning, and it was really cold, so I called maintenance-on-call,” said Emily Johnson, secretary of the building’s tenant council, who was told to turn on her oven and keep the oven door open for warmth. She also was told only a few units were impacted.

“The entire building is elderly and vulnerable adults. As the day went on, it was getting colder and colder,” Johnson said. “I called a total of four times … and by the time I called the second or third time … they were just stating they were working on it, they knew about it and they couldn’t do anything more.”

The Hi-Rise is operated by the public housing authority, independent of city government. Louise Seeba, deputy executive director and general counsel for the public housing authority, said in an interview Tuesday that a boiler lost pressure and had to be drained, filled and reignited.

While a dozen residents called on-call maintenance to complain over 24 hours, she was unaware of reports of plummeting temperatures.

“We were out there, we were fixing it,” Seeba said. “I don’t know if it got below 70 (degrees), but it could have. Nobody reported that to us.”

From 4 to 7 p.m. Sunday, Johnson contacted every agency she could think of, including the United Way, the American Red Cross and the police non-emergency number, but was unable to rouse an immediate response.

She then found a campaign flier for Nelsie Yang, a candidate for city council, who on Saturday was door knocking in the building, which has a large Hmong population.

“If I hadn’t gotten a hold of her, we probably wouldn’t have gotten anywhere,” Johnson said.

Yang put out a request for blankets and space heaters on Facebook and reached out to Ramsey County Commissioner Jim McDonough’s office for help. “People had their winter coats on,” said Yang, who visited the building’s common area again Sunday. “They were coming downstairs for warmth.”

McDonough rushed to a hardware store and bought 10 heaters for residents.

“There were a couple people who were like, ‘come to my house, pick up my heater,’ so I drove to their homes,” said Yang on Tuesday. “I still have to return them.”

A small parade of additional volunteers responded, including the Ramsey County sheriff’s office and Tin Cup’s Bar on Rice Street, which donated chicken wings and mashed potatoes with gravy.

About 9:45 p.m. Sunday, residents gathered around heaters in the community room and enjoyed a free meal.

At about 8 p.m. Sunday, the initial maintenance workers who arrived told Johnson they had been under the impression only a few units were impacted, and didn’t realize the entire building had gone cold.

“After maintenance was here for an hour or an hour and a half, we had heat on again,” Johnson said.

The thing that irked her most about the experience, she said, was the lack of communication from building management throughout the ordeal.

On Monday, management left notes under the doors of every unit apologizing that the boiler had lost heating pressure, and offering pizza in the community room. Related Articles St. Paul district reports enrollment drop as pandemic moves school online

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On Tuesday, St. Paul Deputy Mayor Jaime Tincher said her office checked Monday morning with its Department of Safety and Inspections, which “had received no lack of heat or other complaint at that time.”

“However,” she added, “(director Ricardo Cervantes) did plan to send an inspector to find out what the situation was. We will check back with him and follow up.”