Twin Cities officials expect to see more people abandoned by landlords and left with empty oil tanks this winter – and they can do little to help.

Officials met Thursday with church representatives and the Androscoggin United Emergency Management Agency to discuss what they could do. They agreed to set up a warming center, which will not operate as an overnight shelter, for people at the Trinity Jubilee Center at 247 Bates St. in Lewiston.

“I don’t think this rises to being a crisis-level situation yet, but we need to prepare if things get worse,” Lewiston Deputy City Administrator Phil Nadeau said Thursday. “There is some assistance available and some things we can do.”

Record-high prices for No. 2 heating oil, coupled with cold December temperatures, have left some landlords unable to keep fuel tanks full at their apartment buildings.

Auburn officials said that since the beginning of November, 25 landlords have simply abandoned their properties and left tenants without heat. Cristy Bourget, the city’s code-enforcement officer, said she is aware of four buildings that are in foreclosure, affecting as many as 40 families.

Nadeau did not have similar statistics Thursday, but he thought the situation was just as bad in Lewiston. He said city officials knew of four situations in which banks were foreclosing on Lewiston landlords.

“We’ve never had a landlord approach the city for general assistance help, until this winter,” Nadeau said. “This winter, we’ve had two.”

In one of those cases, the landlord – who lived in his building – met state income qualifications for general assistance and was able to get fuel assistance vouchers. The other had too much income and didn’t qualify.

“He just needed a little help to get through, and we couldn’t give it to him,” Nadeau said.

Both cities provide heating oil vouchers through general assistance programs. Those programs are managed according to state rules.

“It’s not our program,” Nadeau said. “We don’t get to say what the income guidelines are, or who gets help and who doesn’t. We can only follow state guidelines.”

They refer everyone else to state programs and local charities.

Nadeau said the warming center will be for people who need a break from the cold.

“It gives them a place to go in the afternoon, if they’re waiting for their oil to be delivered,” he said. The center is not meant to be a shelter and won’t have beds. It will have supervised places with heat, bathrooms and some places to rest.

Joanne Potvin, director of Androscoggin United EMA, met with representatives from the county’s smaller towns and villages Wednesday night to discuss setting up other warming centers.

People should call 911 if their heat fails and they need public assistance, she said.

Legal recourse

City officials said they will work with residents whose landlords refuse to help. In Auburn, Fire Prevention Officer Gary Simard said he’s contacted police departments in other towns to get in touch with Auburn landlords who live out of town. Nadeau said Lewiston officials will try to contact the banks or companies that own the mortgages on the apartment buildings.

“We will do everything within our power to make them understand their responsibility, and we will be very aggressive,” he said. “And those mortgage holders, they need to know that it is not in their best interest to have us involved.”

Auburn officials say there is little they can do for Thomas and Jenn Ward of Auburn. They paid to fill the tank in their four-unit apartment building when their landlord failed to do it on his own. A frozen pipe in unoccupied units in the building broke and flooded the apartment Saturday, forcing them out with no money and few prospects to help find a new building.

Dot Meagher, Auburn’s director of health and social services, said the Wards would probably have to take landlord Justin Keck to small claims to court to recover the money they spent on oil, as well as their security deposit.