Tina Marie Smith finally has a working radiator on the first floor of her Creighton Court apartment.

The only problem: It doesn’t produce much heat.

And it hasn’t, she said, since maintenance workers from the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority installed it three weeks ago.

“I have to turn on my oven and heat water on the gas stove to keep the first floor warm,” she said. “The radiator on the second floor does fine, but not the ones on the first floor. Me and my grandson have to bundle up if the stove isn’t running.”

She’s not alone. Brittany Green, who lives a few doors away in the public housing community reports having the same problem. Radiators at her apartment work properly only on the second floor, she said. Other neighbors said they have the same problem.

Like Ms. Green, Ms. Smith said she has received promises of a fix, “but nothing has happened.”

Frustrated, Ms. Smith is threatening to put her rent in escrow at Richmond General District Court until RRHA gets the heat working, a tactic the state’s Landlord-Tenant Act allows renters to use when owners fail to meet their lease obligations.

T.K. Somanath, RRHA chief executive officer, stated that he appreciated the update in responding to a Free Press request for comment and said that Ms. Smith should file a maintenance request.

Ms. Smith said she didn’t file such a request “because maintenance already had been here twice” since the radiator was installed.

“They promised to come back, but they haven’t,” she said.

The Free Press featured Ms. Smith’s heating problem in its Jan. 7-9 edition. The article reported on RRHA’s failure to replace a broken radiator that had been removed three years ago.

RRHA installed a replacement radiator Jan. 6 after the newspaper sought comment on Ms. Smith’s problem before the article was published. But the replacement unit also was broken and leaked water.

After the article’s publication, RRHA workers brought a second replacement radiator and removed a space heater Ms. Smith had been provided. But no one checked to make sure it was heating properly, she said.

Separately, RRHA is embarking on a $623,000 project to replace outdated and nonfunctioning outdoor lighting at its housing communities to address security concerns raised by the Richmond Police Department.

About 25 percent of the lighting was found to be nonfunctional, according to RRHA. The lighting work includes installing fixtures that put out more light.

The authority has hired Commercial One Electrical to undertake this first effort to comprehensively address the lighting situation.

The authority also reportedly is making plans to replace broken outdoor cameras. The cameras were installed to upgrade security, but police investigating crimes have found a number that no longer work. The replacement cost is pegged at $300,000.