Lowell apartment building without air conditioning amid heatwave

Three consecutive days in the nineties make for a heatwave. Well, in Lowell, they’ve done one better. Wednesday, the temperature crested at 91 degrees — only slightly lower than Sunday’s 92 and the back-to-back 94s posted on Monday and Tuesday.

“It would be nice with one of the hottest summers in recent history to have air conditioning,” said Joe Welsh, who lives in the Massachusetts Mills apartment complex in Lowell.

Actually, Welsh is supposed to have air conditioning. It’s on the list of amenities at Mass. Mills. But for a week now, he says the AC hasn’t been working. And that seems to be true for all tenants of Building 200, part of a sprawling mill complex transformed into loft-style apartments.

“They’ve sent out two e-mails since the air conditioning completely went out,” Welsh said. “Both emails are kind of the same thing. They’re working on it, they’re doing the best they can. And they’re suggesting people go out and buy $200 floor units for air conditioning.”

Unless it’s spelled out in the lease, landlords are not required to provide air conditioning in Massachusetts rental properties because it is not considered essential to life. Some would argue, with summers getting hotter and longer as a result of climate change, that it might be time to revisit the issue.

Two Massachusetts Mills tenants spoke with Boston 25 News anonymously.

One is a parent to a 20-year-old son with cerebral palsy.

“Right now, in my apartment, we have about six fans going at the same time,” he said. “Everybody suffers at this time. And the only thing we’ve been asking is some type of solution or a timeline — when is this going to get solved?”

Boston 25 News tried to find out, but our call to John Corcoran & Company, the owner of Massachusetts Mills, was not returned.

“It gets to the point where it’s unbearable,” said one tenant. “We also have newborn babies in the building and elderly people that live by themselves.”

Welsh said he and his girlfriend have been using lots of ice water and freezer packs to stay cool.

“When I pass people in the building they’ll ask, is your AC still out,” Welsh said. “You can see visibly on their faces they’re having as hard a time as we are.”

But Welsh is trying to put the lack of AC in perspective.

“I think it’s one of those things where you keep in mind that a lot of people in the world, they got it much harder than you do. So you do the best you can to tough it out.”

Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts.

Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter . | Watch Boston 25 News NOW