DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Several residents of a DeKalb County senior citizen community have been without water since Christmas Eve.
Vivian Ervin, who lives at the Magnolia Circle Apartments, was cooking that night – when her water suddenly shut off. She said management has not communicated what is happening with her or her neighbors.
"I’ve leaned on my community and the rest of my family to transport water and take care of whatever. Sometimes we’ve had to buy, sometimes we get from the neighbor. It's extremely frustrating because after you’ve been here that long, been loyal to the company and paid your rent on time, you expect some kind of compensation – as in, good service," she said.
11Alive reached out to Initiative, the company that owns several affordable housing properties including this apartment complex. They said they had to shut off all water in the block after a pipe in a nearby unit burst.
"Kind of traumatic. There's been no water for anything. Not drinking, not bathing, the toilets – nothing works. So it’s been stressful," she said.
Reginald Young, president of the tenant association for the community, said management has not been very responsive.
“[Residents have] called to no avail. There was one that made contact but management was away. Management wouldn’t be back until Wednesday. End result is that nobody was here to do assistance. I don’t like to go there too much but it was frustrating. It hurt. It angered me," he said.
Young was one of the first to arrive when an apartment in the block began flooding.
"Water was like ankle-deep. We were hoping to get some assistance within a day. No assistance. The gentleman whose apartment it is, he's legally blind," he added.
Young said he believes this is "abuse and neglect of seniors."
"If [the manager is] away - we know that he has a lot on him - if he’s away, we would hope that there would be some type of liaison that was picked up – that someone would pick up that opening and be available," he said. "We’re used to having emergency calls but we’re told, once you make that call, some tenants have been told, 'Don’t call no more.'"
Initiative staff adds that they have called a plumbing company, and were told there were about 1,900 people already waiting ahead of them after this weekend's freezing temperatures.
They said that a plumber should be on-site Wednesday. They added that while the manager has been away, he has been "responsive," and said that he called all tenants before shutting off the water in their building.
Ervin said she never got a call.
“We have no information," she said. "I thought it would have been on yesterday, but I was disappointed... I’d like to see some consideration for the seniors – we are all seniors, we are all past 65, I’m way past 65 – we like to be respected and taken care of just as we have taken care of that younger generation before us."
11Alive also reached out to DeKalb Watershed Management. The agency said there was a water main break in the area but that it was fixed Tuesday afternoon. The particular issue will have to be fixed by a plumber, as the pipes burst inside an apartment.