Alexis Crosswell thought she’d freshen up before welcoming her U.S. senators into the Barbour Gardens apartment she shares with her mother, but the water in her shower Monday morning ran freezing cold and then not at all.

So the 22-year-old Hartford woman added the unplanned outage to the litany of failures she and her mother detailed for Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy as they toured their Section 8 project on Monday to see firsthand how some residents are living in publicly subsidized squalor.

While the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is canceling its contract with the owner of Barbour Gardens and another affordable housing complex in Hartford, residents like Crosswell and her mother, tenant organizer Betty Wadley, are stuck in limbo. As they start the monthslong process of relocating to other apartments, they’re still dependent on absentee owners and property managers for necessities like working heat and hot water, pest control and security.

“This is inhumane and totally unhealthy," Murphy said after leaving Crosswell’s apartment, where he and Blumenthal took in the unit’s cinder block walls, extensive mold and water damage and a broken front door with a loose deadbolt.

At a church down the street, where he gathered with a few dozen residents, Murphy added, “Nobody should be getting wealthy off of housing that is falling down around the residents, and that’s basically what’s happening here. People are making a whole ton of money off housing that nobody should live in.”

Blumenthal and Murphy and U.S. Rep. John Larson, D-1st District, have been following the issue since May, when they wrote to HUD Secretary Ben Carson about the termination of the Clay Arsenal Renaissance Apartments contract.

That 26-building project, scattered throughout Hartford’s North End, was the first to lose its contract with HUD, which was sending $1 million per year in rental subsidies to owner Emmanuel Ku. Now, the agency is stripping its subsidies from Barbour Gardens, an 84-unit development, and Infill I, 52 units scattered throughout the North End.

This time, the lawmakers hardened their tone. Rather than denouncing the landlords, Blumenthal, Murphy and Larson demanded more accountability from HUD itself, questioning whether the agency was doing everything in its power to deal with negligent owners.

“The issues plaguing these properties may point to broader issues endemic to the Department’s inspection processes, on which hinges the integrity of the Department’s enforcement system,” the lawmakers wrote on Feb. 1.

The senators echoed that concern on Monday as they walked the pockmarked grounds of Barbour Gardens. Murphy said HUD’s lack of urgency was “disgusting" and suggests the agency is dragging its feet with other publicly subsidized projects across Connecticut and the U.S.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he told residents gathered at Urban Hope Refuge Church. “If HUD was serious about making sure people don’t profit off substandard living conditions, they would be acting differently.”

Murphy added he’ll be putting more pressure on HUD to step up its actions.

“I certainly will, having seen this firsthand for the first time," he said.

Murphy and Blumenthal also questioned how the agency could have given Barbour Gardens a passing score of 81 out of 100 on an inspection in February 2018. Tenant activists protested that report, which led HUD to re-inspect the property in October.

The project received a 9.

That discrepancy may warrant an internal audit by HUD, or a federal investigation to determine if anyone lied during the inspection process, said Blumenthal, who called HUD “complicit” in the situation.

“What’s happening here is criminal," he said. “I’m a prosecutor by training. I know fraud when I see it, and this is unfortunate really illicit and unforgivable.”