LEWISTON – Landlord Travis Soule has repeatedly failed to heat his downtown apartment buildings, according to Lewiston’s code enforcement department.

The city this week fined him $110 for not heating 153-155 Bartlett St. while the outside temperatures dropped below zero.

Among those living in that building: two elderly sisters, a woman with asthma, her four children and a sick husband, and a pregnant mother of three who is due to give birth any day.

“Every week you have two days, three days of no heat,” said Samia Fadoulalla, who lives on the first floor. She and two of her children have asthma and her husband is ill and elderly. When the heat was off, she said, the children slept in coats and gloves. Her husband is living with friends in Portland because he is too frail to be without heat.

Fadoulalla, a Sudanese immigrant, said she and a Sudanese community liaison complained several times to Soule about the building running out of heating fuel. Sometimes the complaints went unanswered, she said. Sometimes Soule would respond by putting 10 to 20 gallons in the tank, enough to heat the old building for a few hours before it turned cold again.

Such actions have frustrated code enforcement officials.

“We certainly don’t want tenants to experience a winter where they’re without heat and they get some oil and they’re without heat. It’s just unacceptable,” said Gil Arsenault, Lewiston code enforcement director.

Missed deadline

Soule, 44, of New Gloucester, says he’s had trouble keeping heat in his buildings this winter, including the Bartlett Street building. But he said he’s had problems with his furnaces, issues with broken pipes, a change in building management and financial struggles stemming from last winter’s high oil prices.

When his 153-155 Bartlett St. tenants ran out of oil this week, he said it was because of a “miscommunication between us and the oil company” over delivery dates.

He said it would not happen again.

“I think we’ll have it resolved from this point going forward,” Soule said.

He was returning from a business trip to Florida on Friday and said he had not heard about the city’s citation and fine.

Code enforcement records show the city has received 11 complaints this winter about six buildings owned by Soule. Two involved the accumulation of trash. Nine were for lack of heat.

No-heat complaints aren’t new to Lewiston. The city has received 54 complaints since the end of October, including 10 calls this month, which is about average. It received a few calls Friday morning, when temperatures dipped below zero for the second day in a row. Friday evening, police also received a call from a Lewiston renter who had no heat.

Code enforcement officers investigate claims and, if warranted, notify landlords that they are violating the law and give them a deadline to comply with heating regulations. Landlords who don’t get their buildings heated by the deadline face citations and fines.

Soule had 150 gallons of oil delivered to 153-155 Bartlett St. on Thursday afternoon, six hours past the deadline. Lewiston code enforcement estimated 150 gallons is enough to last the building about five days.

‘But the cold’

On Friday, Fadoulalla’s first-floor apartment was up to 65 degrees. Other apartments, including those rented by a pair of elderly sisters and a woman who is nine months pregnant, were still cold. John Ragan, Soule’s building manager, said pipes had frozen and burst in the night and he was working to fix the problem and get heat restored to any units that were cold.

Ragan said he’s been caring for Soule’s buildings since November and had dealt with numerous heating calls, including some on Christmas. He believed some of the heating problems stemmed from tenants turning up the basement furnace’s thermostat, leaving apartment windows open and shutting off radiators.

“None of them have gone overnight without heat,” he said.

But Ragan also said the buildings have run out of heating fuel at times and Soule told him to put in 20 gallons until more could be delivered later.

“He’s not going to pay a driver an extra $100 to have them deliver same day. He’s just not going to do it,” Ragan said.

The tenants deny they’ve left windows open, shut off radiators or done anything else to affect the heat.

Because Fadoulalla receives housing assistance, the Lewiston Housing Authority is also looking into the situation. If an apartment is deemed unsafe, the housing authority can withhold rent until the landlord fixes the problem. In extreme situations, it can move its renter to another apartment.

Fadoulalla said she had been looking for another apartment, but it’s hard to find a landlord willing to accept a family of six with a Section 8 voucher.

She hates the thought of uprooting her children.

“She likes this apartment,” said Mustafa Mahmoud, the Sudanese community liaison and translator. “She wouldn’t move if she didn’t have to. But the cold.”