Tracy E. (34) and her two children have been missing the balcony door since June: “Winter is coming now, we are freezing all day.”

class=”sc-29f61514-0 dXbCZE”>

Nursing assistant Tracy E., 34, plugs in the small fan heater. “Otherwise it will be very cold and I will also have to heat it,” she says. Little girl (3) dressed as Michelin Man and watching cartoons on tablet. There is a large hole in the living room where the balcony door should be. “It’s been like this since June,” Tracy E. tells Blick. “I’m helpless, I don’t know what to do anymore. Now that winter is coming, we are freezing all day long,” she said.

He looks around the garden of his apartment near Brugg AG. “The door is here in the wall,” he says. A piece broke off at the bottom of the frame. “You can’t hang them anymore,” he says. So what does he do when he’s not at home or at night when everyone else is asleep? He answers the question with a shrug: “We close the shutters, then we’ll have at least some security.”

fear at night

However, this security depends only on the small wire hook that holds the shutter closed from the inside. “Someone already tried to break in twice,” Tracy E. tells Blick. “That’s why I wake up at every sound. I’m afraid.” One of the reasons why E. does not want to see the exact place of residence. In addition to the fear of thieves, it also puts a strain on your health. “It’s cold outside now. My daughter and I caught a cold. Thanks to the fan heater, the air in the apartment is always very dry. This is unhealthy.”

The apartment costs 1,100 francs a month and the single mother now also has to pay huge electricity costs for electric heating. “Something has to happen eventually,” he says. You can’t live like this in winter.

Leaky windows, chaos in the basement

He took over the flat five years ago. “I was happy to get the apartment,” Tracy E. told Blick. But things weren’t perfect from the beginning. «The bedroom window is leaking, the garden gate is broken, the awning is old and worn. The handymen uncovered a water pipe in my basement, so I had to clean everything out. When the neighbors got angry with my luggage in the hallway, the management blamed me.” Then, there was a problem with the balcony door.

When that situation broke down in June, Tracy E. called management. A master also came. “He said that the door would be repaired in mid-September at the latest. I didn’t think the weather was that bad at the time, it was hot until the end of September.” But when the first cold weather arrived in October, he had had enough. “I asked my father to call the administration. They didn’t listen to me,” says E. Finally, two weeks ago, an administrative employee came and answered the door. But Nothing else happened.

“We wanted to replace the door with a window”

Management roughly confirms the tenant’s story to Blick. But they hold women responsible for the misery. “We wanted to replace the door with a window in the summer. “But the tenant did not want this, he insisted on access to the garden,” the general manager told Blick. The cost of replacing the openable balcony door is 5,000 francs. “At that time, it was already clear that a new change would last until December. Then we lost sight of the case. “The tenant was happy with the situation until the weather got cold.”

The manager says they have now given feedback and taken action. “The responsible manager has already given the order to the company. However, it will be December before the door will be installed. It does not pre-exist.”

*Name changed

Source : Blick