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On Your Side: Jacksonville tenant says she had no A/C for weeks

A woman who lives at an apartment in New Town reached out to the On Your Side team because she said she's been drenched it sweat in her own home. She said her air conditioning unit had been broken for weeks.

A woman who lives at an apartment in New Town reached out to the On Your Side team because she said she's been drenched it sweat in her own home. She said her air conditioning unit had been broken for weeks.

Jammie Davis said she hasn't been able to sleep in her own home because it’s been so hot. She's a single mother with health issues. She has three kids, one who's disabled, another with asthma, and one with eczema.

"It's 84 degrees in here," said Davis, who lives in the apartment off Beaver Street. "The A.C. keeps leaking, it's broken now. The refrigerator is broken and I can't get no help."

Davis said she called the property managers several times about the broken A.C.

"For almost a month and a half, two months, it's been acting up - on and off. Each and every time I call them out here and put in a work order, nobody comes," Davis said.

She has congestive heart failure, among other health issues. "I have to come over here to my neighbors house to take my breathing treatment, because it's too hard to breathe over there. We have to come over here to cook, my boys have to come over here to shower."

First Coast News reached out to the property management company, MatchMade Realty; first over the phone, then in person. An employee told me they hire an independent maintenance worker to fix problems like this. He assured our reporter it was a high priority, but couldn't present records to show that anyone had been to Davis’ home.

We also reached out to the property owner, whose lawyer in Washington State could not forward our message along.

Hours later, Davis said help had arrived.

Rogers Green with RGJ Construction came and fixed it. He said the coils were dirty and it was causing the AC to stop pumping air. He reported to MatchMade Realty that that issue is caused when no one replaces the AC filters regularly.

Green said the MatchMade Realty forwarded him the First Coast News email inquiry along with their request for him to get to Davis’s home as soon as possible.

"I'm happy. All I wanted was my A.C. fixed, and I got it," said Davis.

A representative of MatchMade Realty said Davis will be charged for the maintenance work because they said she had not changed the A.C. filters in some time, which is a tenant’s responsibility. The representative also said the A.C. unit was serviced a few weeks ago with a similar report.

Florida Statute says a landlord must provide heat or air to a tenant, and a tenant must operate air conditioning, ventilation, plumbing and sanitation in a reasonable manner.

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