DETROIT (WXYZ) — Water heaters and furnaces have been installed in five homes in southwest Detroit after delays, but the city isn’t as far along in the process as some homeowners would like.
When it comes to the process of getting people back in their homes, many people are waiting on furnaces and water heaters to be replaced by the city.
“We lost everything. I had a lot of tools, my furniture, everything,” said Ruben Rodriguez, who lives on Army Street.
Rodriguez’s basement was cleaned on Monday so that his new furnace and water heater can be installed. Jimmy Rios, also known as Jimmy the Plumber, was there assisting contractors with accessing water.
“I was waiting for about a week. They always make appointments, and they don't show up,” said Rodriguez.
With no hot water or heat, his entire family has been staying at the hotel paid for by the city.
“We want to come back to our house,” he said.
On Monday, he learned his furnace and water heater will be installed Wednesday, but he says he was told it would be much sooner.
“Friday, I cancelled to work, and nobody showed up,” Rodriguez explained. “Right now they're helping but we don't see no help before.”
Community volunteer Veronica Rodriguez says their family isn't the only one still waiting on promises to be kept.
“Our main concern is just the communication. There's a not a good enough communication plan in place with the city officials and if volunteers have come up with a system that works and we're all just volunteers, people that have their own jobs and families and it’s come this far that they can contact us and they know that we'll reach out and it should be happening the same way or even better with the city,” said Veronica Rodriguez.
Bryan Peckinpaugh, Deputy Director of Public Affairs with the City of Detroit, says they are ramping up work this week with more contractors and people answering phone lines to help coordinate scheduling.
“We recognize that we have, there is a gap, so we got feedback from the community and these residents so we understand their concerns. We appreciate their concern and their patience so we are adding dedicated staff that are going to work the phone lines as well as with our project manager who is working on this specific project with the contractors so they’re going to be fully dedicated to this work scheduling with the contractors, scheduling with the homeowners,” said Peckinpaugh.
He’s thankful for volunteers from the community working to help coordinate and fill gaps.
“An issue that we're handling now for example, here a couple houses down, the cleaning crews here they a don't have a pump truck to receive offsite water, so what I'm going to do is I’m going connect them a hose fitting on the meter so they can have access so they can continue the work and we can move things forward,” said Jimmy Rios, also known as Jimmy the Plumber.
