By Katie Trojano, Reporter Staff
March 4, 2021
Katie Trojano, Reporter Staff
Karen Kinsel struggled to stay warm last winter. The 66-year-old Dorchester woman made do with electric space heaters when she couldn’t afford to replace her outdated furnace. It got even harder financially when the pandemic hit and she was laid off in June from her job as a secretary at a bio-tech firm.
A repairman who visited her home last fall to appraise the cost of a new furnace estimated it would run between $8,000 and $10,000.
“You know, they tell you to have a savings reserves, and I did,” said Kinsel. “But it kind of got used up in that time and I couldn’t have afforded to fix that stuff by myself.”