Apartment Mail Rooms

[pinesofwestbury]

Are apartment communities required to provide air conditioning for the mail carrier. Our mail room has a secure door so they may deliver the mail, two ceiling fans. I am in Houston - and my mail carrier refuses to deliver to the residents due to no AC. Can any one guide me on this - I may also add there are no electric outlets in the room, and the windows do not open. I offered to purchase a large fan for this purpose but he declined.

 

[quincy]

Are apartment communities required to provide air conditioning for the mail carrier. Our mail room has a secure door so they may deliver the mail, two ceiling fans. I am in Houston - and my mail carrier refuses to deliver to the residents due to no AC. Can any one guide me on this - I may also add there are no electric outlets in the room, and the windows do not open. I offered to purchase a large fan for this purpose but he declined.

How long does it take the mail carrier to deposit mail in the tenants' mail boxes? The large apartment complex mail boxes I am familiar with have rows of boxes connected to each other, with one key opening several at once. The mail sorting is done at the post office and it is a relatively simple matter for the mail carrier to drop each tenant's mail in a box, close up the boxes, move on.

I can't find where it is a requirement in Texas for air conditioning to be provided, although I can see where it would be more comfortable for the mail carrier to have air conditioning in an enclosed room on hot days. I imagine it would also be nice for mail carriers to not have to deliver door to door on hot days, though (or through snow or rain or gloom of night ).

Have you made your concerns, which I assume are related to you not getting your mail delivered on a regular basis, known to the post office?

 

[LdiJ]

Are apartment communities required to provide air conditioning for the mail carrier. Our mail room has a secure door so they may deliver the mail, two ceiling fans. I am in Houston - and my mail carrier refuses to deliver to the residents due to no AC. Can any one guide me on this - I may also add there are no electric outlets in the room, and the windows do not open. I offered to purchase a large fan for this purpose but he declined.

I can imagine that a room that is secure like that, with no ventilation could be absolutely an inferno during a TX summer. Again, how many mailboxes does he have to fill in that mail room?

 

[pinesofwestbury]

How long does it take the mail carrier to deposit mail in the tenants' mail boxes? The large apartment complex mail boxes I am familiar with have rows of boxes connected to each other, with one key opening several at once. The mail sorting is done at the post office and it is a relatively simple matter for the mail carrier to drop each tenant's mail in a box, close up the boxes, move on.

I can't find where it is a requirement in Texas for air conditioning to be provided, although I can see where it would be more comfortable for the mail carrier to have air conditioning in an enclosed room on hot days. I imagine it would also be nice for mail carriers to not have to deliver door to door on hot days, though (or through snow or rain or gloom of night ).

Have you made your concerns, which I assume are related to you not getting your mail delivered on a regular basis, known to the post office?

I am unsure how many there are I am just estimating under 500. He presented us with a paper from his office stating "not ventilated" "unsafe" - today he posted something on the door stating there will be no mail delivered. My only idea was to get an extension cord, plug it in the outlet housing the Coke machine and running a fan into the room - Monday I will provide my residents the information including his name etc., so that they can reach out to the post office as well. I also googled mail room and all I found was this -631.45 Apartment Houses - yes Houston is warm generally more so after 2-3 p.m. He generally delivers between 11-noon. Do I contact the Postmaster?

 

[pinesofwestbury]

I can imagine that a room that is secure like that, with no ventilation could be absolutely an inferno during a TX summer. Again, how many mailboxes does he have to fill in that mail room?

For that reason I offered to purchase a fan - put it in the mail room for his delivery duration then remove it when he was finished. Again, there are no outlets. There was a daycare next door which is now vacant - I am new to this apartment community so I am not sure what transpired last year - the air conditioner may have reached the mail room however, the same air conditioner is no longer working.

 

[quincy]

I am unsure how many there are I am just estimating under 500. He presented us with a paper from his office stating "not ventilated" "unsafe" - today he posted something on the door stating there will be no mail delivered. My only idea was to get an extension cord, plug it in the outlet housing the Coke machine and running a fan into the room - Monday I will provide my residents the information including his name etc., so that they can reach out to the post office as well. I also googled mail room and all I found was this -631.45 Apartment Houses - yes Houston is warm generally more so after 2-3 p.m. He generally delivers between 11-noon. Do I contact the Postmaster?

You can contact Houston's Postmaster (Jean C. Lovejoy) and you can contact the City Attorney (David Feldman) and, if you do not get the matter resolved through them, you can contact the local media (http://www.readyharris.org/go/doc/1829/875095/Houston-Media-List).

If the mailboxes are USPS conforming, you and the other tenants should be getting regular mail delivery.

And I suggest you look into getting the fan or, better, fixing the air conditioner in the former day care, if it can work to cool the mail room (just to appease your mail carrier).

 

[HighwayMan]

Sounds like the local postmaster already knows about it. I doubt the fan will do very much to remedy the situation.

500 mailboxes? How big is the room? If it's a "community" I'm wondering why each building doesn't have its own mailboxes. Sounds kind of weird.

 

[pinesofwestbury]

Sounds like the local postmaster already knows about it. I doubt the fan will do very much to remedy the situation.

500 mailboxes? How big is the room? If it's a "community" I'm wondering why each building doesn't have its own mailboxes. Sounds kind of weird.

It is an apartment community - I don't use the old school verbiage "complex" but thanks

 

[single317dad]

The postal service has determined your location is unsafe, and has refused to deliver mail until that condition is remedied. That's within their rights. I just had to move my rural mailbox due to lack of sightlines on the road (which I was fine with doing, even though it's been where it was for over 30 years; the road and traffic patterns have changed). You'd get the same response if, for example, you had an attack dog fenced in the yard with your mailbox. They're not going to deliver until you restrain the animal.

 

[LdiJ]

The postal service has determined your location is unsafe, and has refused to deliver mail until that condition is remedied. That's within their rights. I just had to move my rural mailbox due to lack of sightlines on the road (which I was fine with doing, even though it's been where it was for over 30 years; the road and traffic patterns have changed). You'd get the same response if, for example, you had an attack dog fenced in the yard with your mailbox. They're not going to deliver until you restrain the animal.

I am surprised that the residents are not also complaining...although they probably only have to spend a few moments getting their own mail, while it would take the mailman quite some time to fill 500 boxes.

I think that you are going to need to find a way to get AC in that mailroom.

 

[quincy]

There are, apparently, 940 units in pineofwestbury's apartment community/complex (if the user name was not chosen randomly).

The post office in Houston may be reacting to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's response to the heat-related death of a mail carrier in Massachusetts last year.

Following is a link to the "Citation and Notification of Penalty" issued to the USPS after the investigation into the mail carrier's death found a serious violation of OSHA Act of 1970, Section 5 (a)(1): "The employer did not furnish employment and a place of employment which were free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees in that employees were exposed to excessive heat while delivering the U.S. mail."

http://www.osha.gov/ooc/citations/USPS917092.pdf

And here is a link to the United States Department of Labor site, on OSHA Safety and Health Topics, Occupational Heat Exposure (which has additional links of interest): http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/heatstress/standards.html

I am not sure how the mailroom at the apartment community is set up but a call to the Post Office and the City Attorney is still in order, because the tenants cannot be denied their mail. Other arrangements for delivery will need to be made.

 

[HighwayMan]

...a call to the Post Office and the City Attorney is still in order, because the tenants cannot be denied their mail...

Just wondering why you think the City Attorney would have any interest in this.

 

[quincy]

Just wondering why you think the City Attorney would have any interest in this.

He may not.

But there are apparently 940+/- tenants who are not getting their mail delivered and if mail is not delivered, that becomes a problem.

I understand that an enclosed mail room without air conditioning could be a legitimate health concern during the heat of a Texas summer, and a fan could very well be inadequate to cool the room enough to make it comfortable (depending on the mail room and the length of time the mail carrier must spend in it), but the mail carrier's refusal to accept the offer of a fan has struck me as a bit odd.

 

[HighwayMan]

The fan issue might not be for the carrier to decide. I can see where once the mail room was declared a "hazard" then some official process must be gone through to reverse this.

I don't see this as being a decision of the carrier, although he surely started the process.


I can't speak for Texas but around here no City Attorney (or equivalent) would care to get involved in this one. It would be more for the local "Help Me Howard" type of news reporter to put up a stink.

If there are that many residents in the "complex" maybe they could each just chip in two bucks and get some type of AC unit installed with an electrical line for it.

 

[quincy]

The fan issue might not be for the carrier to decide. I can see where once the mail room was declared a "hazard" then some official process must be gone through to reverse this.

I don't see this as being a decision of the carrier, although he surely started the process.


I can't speak for Texas but around here no City Attorney (or equivalent) would care to get involved in this one. It would be more for the local "Help Me Howard" type of news reporter to put up a stink.

If there are that many residents in the "complex" maybe they could each just chip in two bucks and get some type of AC unit installed with an electrical line for it.

I agree that it would be the decision of the post office to stop the delivery of mail to a location.*

The tenants, however, cannot be denied their mail so there must be an arrangement made with the post office for delivery or pick up until the apartment complex finds a suitable fix (if nothing is done, then the failure to get the mail to the residents could potentially become an issue for the city attorney).

It is on the owner of the property to bear the cost of the installation of an air conditioner (if that is what it takes to get mail delivered).

Who exactly are you in all of this, pinesofwestbury? Are you a tenant, a resident manager ... ?





(*I decided, by the way, to edit out from my earlier post the recent Texas mail carrier case, as there is no indication it applies here)