BAD SITUATION — The interior of Angelica Kiersey’s apartment in Heritage Place has suffered water damage from burst pipes. -- Contributed

STEUBENVILLE — Another lawsuit has been filed against Heritage Place and its owners, this time by a young mother who has had six pipes burst in the past three weeks.

The suit, filed in Jefferson County Common Pleas Court on behalf of Heritage Place tenant Angelica Kiersey, alleges owners Green National and WG Heritage Place Ohio, and their management company, Beechwood-based ABC Management, failed to meet statutory requirements meant to ensure rental properties are habitable and safe for tenants. It claims they breached their duty to maintain the property and their contracts with tenants.

Kiersey, mother of a 1-year-old and pregnant with her second child, said her current apartment, a townhouse, hasn’t had heat since she moved into it in October. What she has had during the past few weeks is water — a lot of it–flooding her apartment after frozen pipes thawed out.

“I’ve had six of them, so far, in my living room,” she said. “The first one was close to the breaker box, I had to turn it off. I was very nervous of fire. That was the week before last. Next day, someone came out and dried up all the water and the next day the pipe guy came out and fixed (the leak.)

“But last week, on Thursday, my living room flooded again, and a guy came and busted holes in the wall,” she added.

Kiersey said no one has been back to fix her apartment since the second break: The holes are still open in her walls. Her sofa and area rug, which were completely saturated, remain waterlogged. Power was shut off in her kitchen and she lost the food that was in her refrigerator.

She said she needs the building managers to pen a letter to the Department of Jobs and Family Services, but no one will return her calls.

“Five pipes in all burst (the second time), and everything got ruined again,” Kiersey said. “The kitchen and living room flooded, I had to turn the power off. When they came, I told them, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but you guys need to put us up in a hotel or something until you get it figured out.”

She said her couch and rug are still soaked.

“They said they were going to come and clean the couch, nobody’s come. They said they’re going to patch the walls, but they need to wait until it’s dry,” Kiersey said, pointing out the wall damage from the first burst pipe appears to be dry enough but the rest has a way to go. “Now the ceiling looks like it’s holding water and could come down at any time. I asked if they could send a letter because I lost food, now they’re not even answering my calls.”

Her heat is also still out, she said. At best, temperatures in her apartment have hovered around 56 degrees, but she said they’ve been lower. During the recent cold spell Kiersey said it was so cold “you could see your breath.”

“If it’s not going stay warm in here, how are they going to prevent it from happening again?” she said, adding it feels like the powers-that-be “don’t care because they don’t have to live here.”

“I lived in another apartment here for a year, then moved (into this one),” she said. “I haven’t had heat this whole winter. When I was in the other one it didn’t have heat.”

Attorneys representing tenants in the two lawsuits say dozens of tenants have been without piped-in heat — relying only on small space heaters and ovens — since the first of December, including the sub-zero temperatures recorded locally earlier in the week.

A temporary restraining order was issued giving the defendants five days to restore heat to affected apartments and, in the interim or until the crisis was resolved, affected residents were to be temporarily rehoused — either in fully-furnished apartments in Steubenville or in hotels, in which case food costs would be included.

Green National and ABC Management have been served with that order–ABC Management on Jan. 22 and Green National, which has the same post office mailing address as WG Heritage Place, on Thursday.

None of the defendants were represented at an injunction hearing Friday, so due to non-service it was rescheduled for Feb. 7 at 10:30 a.m.

“I’m more frustrated and more hurt,” Kiersey said. “I respect people here, I don’t cause them problems — I literally stay in the house, gotto work and to church. I’m not a troublemaker. For them not to help and they know I have a child, it’s annoying — it’s not right. When pipes are busting every which way, that’s not something you can live with.”

Both lawsuits were filed by Legal Aid of Southeast and Central Ohio.