STEUBENVILLE — Heritage Place tenants who haven’t had wall-to-wall heat since at least the first of December have asked Jefferson County Common Pleas Judge Joseph Bruzzese to find the owners and their management company in contempt.

Pam Bolton and Alex Vance, attorneys with Legal Aid of Southeast and Central Ohio, filed the two-page motion Thursday asking Bruzzese for an order “requiring WG Heritage Place OH, Green National and ABC Management to appear and show why they should not be held in contempt” for violating the temporary restraining order the judge issued two weeks ago.

In that order, Bruzzese had found the affected tenants of the apartment complex located on Market Street “at risk of immediate and irreparable injury” through the lack of heat in their apartments. He instructed owners Green National and WG Heritage Place, along with their management company, ABC Management, to make the necessary repairs or replace the boilers immediately at the complex, which serves low-income residents, and in the interim, to pay to re-house affected residents in fully furnished apartments or hotels nearby. They also were ordered to pick up the tab for meals for any Heritage Place tenants placed in hotels while they were lodged there.

“As of the date of this filing, all the affected tenants are still without heat and none have been offered an alternative housing option,” Bolton said in the motion. “Due to the defendants blatantly ignoring the orders of this court, (the tenants’) only adequate remedy at law is to ask this court to hold the defendants in contempt.”

Estimates of how many households have been affected have fluctuated, though Bolton previously said by her count all 32 apartments in one building and at least half in another have had no piped-in heat. One tenant said she told building managers she didn’t have heat in October.

Heritage Place employees blamed the problems on the boiler. They’d ordered a replacement part only to find out the problem was more extensive than originally believed and parts are difficult to find. They distributed space heaters to those who wanted them, though residents say those did little to keep them warm during recent cold weather, including days with below-zero temperatures.

Included with the motion for a finding of contempt was an affidavit from one of the four named plaintiffs, Brenda Smith, that she was “still without heat in my apartment. My neighbors do not have heat either.”

“I have a space heater, but it does not sufficiently heat my apartment and I am afraid to use it,” Smith said in the affidavit.