Maintenance
Keep your home in great condition and reduce energy costs!
Missoula Housing Authority’s Maintenance Technicians are skilled technicians able to perform the repairs necessary to maintain dwelling units and the complexes in decent, safe, and sanitary conditions. For more information regarding the tenant/maintenance relationship, please review your Affordable Housing Tenant Handbook.
Have a maintenance concern? Find the contact information for your property manager in the handbook linked above. You’ll need to provide a brief description of the problem, your address, name, phone number, and whether our maintenance technicians have permission to enter your unit if you’re not home.
If you have a maintenance emergency, please call the emergency maintenance line. If your maintenance emergency is life-threatening, your health/safety is at risk, or your personal property is being vandalized, please call 911 for emergency services.
Maintenance Emergency Service
MHA has an after-hours emergency phone for maintenance emergencies that occur after hours on weekdays or on the weekends.
If you have one of the following items occurs during office hours (8:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday – Friday) please contact your Property Manager to request a work order. Please limit your after-hours calls to emergency situations only.
-
An after-hours emergency happens when the office is closed after 5:00 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays, or on holidays. The following are considered after-hours emergencies:
No heat in the winter
A plumbing leak that could cause property damage
No electricity, excluding neighborhood power outages
If you smell a gas leak, please leave the area immediately then call 911 AND Northwestern Energy’s emergency line at 1-888-467-2669 from a safe location.
Toilet inoperable and no alternate facilities available (single bathroom units).
No hot water if it will be more than 8 hours until normal maintenance hours
Entry door or window which has been broken and cannot be secured
If you are locked out of your apartment please contact a locksmith for after hours:
Art & Ray’s Locksmith: 549-7667
Lord and Jackson Locksmith: 728-2163
Bonnie & Clyde American Locksmith: 880-0713
If you are locked out during normal business hours please contact your Property Manager.
If your emergency is life threatening, your health/safety is at risk, or your personal property is being vandalized, please call 911 for emergency services. MHA Maintenance & Management may not be able to immediately assist you in these types of emergency situations.
To contact our Emergency Service team, dial 406-207-5238
A member of our maintenance staff will answer the phone, and if necessary will respond as soon as possible. If you do not get an immediate response, please leave your name, address (including unit number) and a working phone number, along with a detailed message about your emergency. Please limit your after hours calls to emergency situations only.
Maintenance Tips
When calling your Property Manager to submit a work order, indicate whether a maintenance technician has permission to enter your unit if you’re not home. It is faster for maintenance to address your work order if they may enter if you’re not home.
Call in work orders as things happen. The expectation is the tenant will report a maintenance concern within 48- hours.
Review the Emergency Call list criteria above before calling the emergency maintenance line.
Give someone a spare key to your unit. MHA maintenance staff does not do lock-outs and a locksmith is very expensive. Have an extra key with a trusted person in case you forget yours.
In the autumn season, remove hoses from outside faucets.
Upon move-in, do a thorough move-in inspection taking notes and pictures of the condition of the unit. This will help you remember what condition it needs to be in when you move out.
In the spring and summer seasons, keep your lawn picked up (toys, bikes, pet waste) to make it easier for our lawn crews to maintain the grounds.
NO SMOKING of any substance in the units.
Have a plunger handy in case your toilet gets clogged.
Additional Resources & Links:
Potential Fire Hazards
Cooking and smoking cause most residential fires.
In addition to keeping your stovetop clean, remember to keep flammable materials, such as potholders, towels, newspapers, and plastic bags, away from the stove.
Do not leave the stove unattended when you are cooking. Never use water to put out a grease fire; instead, cover the pot with a lid to smother the fire.
Never put metal objects in the microwave.
To avoid electrical fires, replace all frayed, cracked, or broken electrical cords with new ones, and do not plug more than one large appliance into a single electrical outlet.
Bed Bug Education
Bed bugs are small insects with flat, wingless, oval-shaped bodies. They like to hide in small cracks and crevices close to a human environment. They hide in numerous places including mattresses, furniture, clothes, linens, cardboard, electrical boxes and outlets, and behind wallpaper, picture frames, and baseboards.
An early warning indicator of bed bug presence is small reddish-brown fecal spots on bed linens and mattresses. Bed bugs also leave behind molted skins and white, sticky eggs. Another sign of bed bugs is red and itchy bites, usually on the arms or shoulders. Bed bugs do not transmit disease.
To prevent bed bugs:
Keep your home clean and clutter free.
Conduct regular inspections yourself.
Never pick up discarded furniture from the street, ally, or near a dumpster.
Do not purchase second-hand furniture.
When staying at a hotel or friend’s house, perform an inspection of your sleeping area. Keep clothing confined to your suitcase, away from the bed and off the floor.
Mold
Mold is most likely to grow where there is water or dampness, such as in bathrooms. Mold usually appears in its early stages as black circles or blotches. Most types of mold that are routinely encountered are not hazardous to healthy individuals.
In order to reduce the incidence of mold and mildew, protect your own health and the condition of your unit, we suggest the following:
Keep the humidity low and the temperature down.
Use your stove only for cooking, never for heating.
Cover pots when cooking and run your exhaust vent hood fan.
Provide adequate ventilation and use fans.
Make sure your bathroom fan is cleaned of any accumulated dust from the vent cover in order to improve circulation.
Run the bathroom fan for 10–15 minutes after you shower or run a bath in order to remove excess moisture from the air.
Clean your unit regularly and thoroughly.