READING, Pa. – These ruined machines once represented a fresh start for community members living in this low-income community.<\/p>\n
“It’s a tragedy what just happened here, and we want to work to bring it back,” said Manager Khalfani Lassiter.<\/p>\n
“The entire community comes here. I’d say every month, roughly over one hundred people constantly come here. The whole community, all around the neighborhood,\u201d Lassiter added.<\/p>\n
But recently, the owners believe a spark put a stop to that vital cycle.<\/p>\n
“I think so much heat coming through on a hot day, something sparked one of those wires back there,” he said.<\/p>\n
Earlier this summer, a fire ripped through Soaps and Suds Laundromat in the 100 block of Buttonwood Street in Reading.<\/p>\n
“People, they don’t have washers and dryers in their apartments; bills are expensive. We micromanage to make sure our prices are relatively low while still being profitable,” Lassiter said.<\/p>\n
The signs of damage are evident even from outside the laundromat, with a condemned letter from the city as the business looks for a path forward.<\/p>\n
“We are running into difficulties with the insurance companies, and it’s kinda holding us back from getting the laundry mat operational again,” Lassiter said.<\/p>\n
Machines that once made life a little easier for people in this community because of closeness and convenience are off-limits, meaning people have to travel farther to clean their clothes.<\/p>\n
“I know they’re frustrated,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We get phone calls, we get emails, people asking when is it coming back? What are we doing? When are we gonna get it fixed,\u201d Lassiter said.<\/p>\n
The repairs could reach into the six figures.<\/p>\n
“The world is full of tragedies, but we got this business here to keep the community happy,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We want to be proactive and figure out a solution rather than waiting on them,\u201d Lassiter added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – These ruined machines once represented a fresh start for community members living in this low-income…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[112925,112923,524,17162,112924,26008,32820,539,17090,736,128,130,129,18368],"class_list":["post-267854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-appliance-loss","tag-business-recovery","tag-community","tag-fire-damage","tag-insurance-issues","tag-laundromat","tag-low-income","tag-pa","tag-public-service","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-rebuilding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}