Inside a sixth-floor apartment at Richard G. Lugar Tower in downtown Indianapolis, a thermometer recently read 91 degrees. The air conditioning has been broken for weeks at the 17-story public housing high-rise that houses more than 200 low-income seniors and people with disabilities, and Marion County health officials have now ordered the Indianapolis Housing Agency to fix it or pay fines.
The order, issued August 17, gives IHA a deadline to repair the building’s cooling system, according to WISH-TV. The station reports Lugar Tower currently has seven open violations, and residents say the heat has made daily life unbearable. “It is so hot, I can’t even sleep,” resident Bettina McCloud told the station.
Paula Lasley, who has lived at Lugar Tower for five years, said the agency’s response to complaints has become numbingly familiar. “Officials constantly tell residents they do not have funds to fix or do anything,” Lasley said, per WISH-TV’s reporting. Under Marion County’s municipal code, occupied residential health violations like these fall to the Marion County Public Health Department, which handles inspections and civil penalties for occupied units while the city separately manages vacant structures.
A Building Already Under Federal Scrutiny
The broken air conditioning is just the latest item on a long list of maintenance failures at Lugar Tower. Residents have reported missing ceiling tiles exposing wires, water leaks, and mold and general disrepair in common areas and individual units, the station’s report notes. As of Thursday, the agency had not cleaned a sixth-floor unit where a body was found on July 31, according to the same account…