INDIANAPOLIS -
A resident of a northeast Indianapolis apartment complex is looking for help after her air conditioning broke down during this month's heat wave.
Temperatures may have come down from last week's sweltering triple digits, but for Venita Montague in her apartment at the Cottages of Fall Creek, "The thermostat is saying 91. Ninety-one degrees in here."
Last week, said Montague, was even worse.
"It felt like the devil was in this house," she said.
That's because Montague said her air conditioner hasn't been working and management at the complex hasn't bothered to fix it.
"We called the emergency line three times," Montague explained of trying to get help
For Montague, the stifling heat was an emergency, even a matter of life and death, for her elderly father who lives there too and has Alzheimer's.
"That's my dad's life that I'm looking at," Montague explained.
So she put her father in a nursing home temporarily, until she moves somewhere else.
Eyewitness News stopped by the management offices at The Cottages of Fall Creek to ask them their side of the story, but they wouldn't comment.
"Sometimes, certainly, when we do get involved, there's a catalyst there," said Lynne Lynch with the Marion County Public Health Department.
Lynch said the department has heard from people all across the county in the same kinds of predicaments.
"When we hear those key words, somebody with a medical condition, elderly, those types of situations, those are treated as emergencies," she explained.
In an emergency, the health department sends out an inspector who can order management to fix a problem within 24 hours or face a trip to environmental court.
"It's kind of case-by-case, trying to determine what the necessity is on timetables and trying to get the problems corrected," said Lynch.
Eyewitness News also asked a lawyer what legal recourse a tenant would have in a similar situation.
The advice: Put your complaint in writing. According to legal experts, landlords have a reasonable amount of time to fix unsafe living conditions.
What's reasonable, though, can vary, depending on the situation.
Lawyers also advise holding onto receipts if you have to go to a hotel, so you can ask for your money back.
Montague says her priority was her father's safety.
"If I was waiting on them, you know, we all probably could have been sitting up here, done smothered to death," she said.
Montague wasn't waiting for that to happen.
Venita Montague
Montague's apartment was hotter than 90 degrees when her AC broke last week.
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