The very young and the elderly have bodies with needs that are much different from those of us somewhere in between, including the need to be warm. Elderly residents at one Boston Housing Authority public housing complex are feeling the chill after a renovation project changed up the heating system and they’re none too pleased. One BHA authority said at first that they’d just get used to it, eventually.

The Boston Herald says elderly residents are complaining, because the new heating system that was installed as part of a $15 million energy project isn’t warming up their apartments very well. Some say it doesn’t even work all the time.

“The thermostat reads 74, but it’s not 74 in the apartment. No way,” one 88-year-old  man told the paper. “It’s just plain cold, believe me.”

The Boston Housing Authority administrator said at first he thought residents would start to feel warm eventually as they got used to the lower, energy-saving thermostat settings. Maybe with all those jumping jacks and dance parties and the like, right?

“We’ve been through this at other elderly and disabled developments,” he explained. “It takes some time for them to get used to it.”

Apparently “getting used to it” was not an option for residents who were suffering from the chilly atmosphere, which caused the administrator to change his tune. He says he’ll order a change to the system, but only if engineers can manage to override the system’s limits of 74 degrees.

“I’ve instructed them to ask the engineers either to have them put (the thermostats) up higher or if there’s a way we can go higher without touching the thermostats,” he said. “I can’t say definitively tonight if the system can do it.”

Seniors ‘freezing’ in Eastie housing [Boston Herald]

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