Residents at the Rise at West Campus apartment are experiencing a days-long water outage that started at the end of November, according to an email the apartment complex sent to residents. The outage left some without functioning toilets, showers or hot water.
According to that email, water was turned back on, but some residents said they currently do not have hot water. Rise management said its plumbing team will work to restore hot and cold water and “determine why the issue is persisting.” The disruption comes after a previous water outage that began in early November, according to an email from apartment management.
The apartment’s management did not respond to questions asking for a timeline and the current status of the outages. However, in an email sent to residents on Nov. 30, management said water for some residents had been restored the previous night, and it would continue working on restoring the rest.
After the first outage, management did not initially reimburse residents for time spent without water, architecture sophomore Alexandra Connors said. However, management wrote in a Dec. 1 email to residents that they will apply rent abatements for both water outages.
Government sophomore Sabrina Bhattarai said she went several days with no running water, low water pressure and inconsistent email updates. She said the second outage began around Thanksgiving Day, but she was not notified of the issue until a Nov. 30 email from management. The earlier outage lasted more than a week, she said, but the more recent outage has been more harmful.
“It was worse than last time because last time the toilet was functioning at least, but this time, the toilet didn’t work at all,” Bhattarai said.
The earlier water outage forced psychology sophomore Arish Hirani to shower at friends’ apartments. He said he also had to pay for a hotel during the outage, and the disruption made managing classes and studying much harder.
“I had to shower at friends’ apartments, (and) kind of felt like I was intruding in a way,” Hirani said. “It’s a bad look (saying), ‘Oh, can I come to your apartment and use your bathroom?’”
Connors said some students resorted to using gallon jugs to manually flush their toilets. The outages highlighted ongoing issues with management’s communication and accountability, she said, leaving her frustrated and questioning the reliability of the building’s management.
“If this is happening now, and you’ll continue to have water issues for the entire semester, what is my future going to be like living here?” Connors said.