Assistance recognized — Steubenville City Council Tuesday presented Urban Mission Ministries with a resolution thanking it for providing food for residents at Heritage Place apartments who have been without heat for more than two months. The Rev. Kimberly Arbaugh, executive director of the Urban Mission, left, and board member Sandy Rue accepted the resolution from Second Ward Councilman Royal Mayo. -- Linda Harris

STEUBENVILLE — Attorneys representing residents of Heritage Place apartments say they’ve been advised the part needed to fix a faulty boiler that has left dozens of residents without heat for more than two months should be delivered no later than Monday.

In the meantime, tenants affected by the 2.5 month-long heating outage have been given new space heaters expected to keep their apartments much warmer.

“Most of the tenants have the new space heaters,” said Alex Vance, an attorney with Legal Aid of Southeast Ohio. “It was suggested that a different kind would work better because they’re more powerful; they give off a different kind of heat that covers more square footage than the (original) ones. Not everyone’s got them yet.”

Tenants in the affordable housing complex had reported they have been without heat since at least the beginning of December, and in mid-January filed a lawsuit to force the building’s owners, Green National and WG-Heritage Place Ohio, as well as their former management company, ABC Management of Beechwood, to fix the boilers or move them at their expense into furnished apartments or hotels.

After their plight became public, they said employees did offer them space heaters, but they were smaller, less efficient models that did little to address the chill.

The beefier heaters now in use are the direct result of a closed-door discussion on Feb. 7 between attorneys representing all parties as well as Jefferson County Common Pleas Judge Joseph Bruzzese.

Bruzzese had been scheduled to hear arguments that morning for a preliminary injunction, but the hearing had to be rescheduled due to the judge’s unexpectedly crowded court docket.

After the private meeting ended, Legal Aid’s Pamela Bolton and Kristen Lewis announced the interim fix, which she said included an agreement that, should the temperature drop below 68 degrees in any of the apartments relying on the new space heaters, affected tenants would be rehoused.

They’d initially expected the agreement to be placed into court records as early as last Monday, but it’s taking longer than expected for the order to be drafted and for the parties to sign off.

On Thursday, Bruzzese’s staff advised they’d been told it’s still being finalized and, since nothing has been submitted for the court record, they don’t know if it will address the preliminary injunction alone or if the case will be resolved in its totality. Vance, meanwhile, reported the new boiler part is expected to arrive any day now, “and once the part gets here it will be a one-day install” by the contractor.

“Hopefully, it will be here before this Monday,” she had said, adding that in the meantime, “we’re trying to make sure the tenants take care of themselves, that there are no disconnects.”

Neither Bolton nor Vance could be reached Thursday for comment. Attorneys for Green National, WG-Heritage Place and ABC Management have declined to comment.