Rent credits are usually issued to make the resident "whole" so this would mean they had to live elsewhere until the heat was fixed. If the resident has renters insurance, renters insurance may pay for motel stays if the apartment home is not habitable. Therefore, you would have no need to issue any rent credits in that case. If insurance is not required and most residents don't have coverage, and the apartments are not habitable due to no fault of their own, as a good will gesture, your company can issue rent credits as long as a receipt is received for the lodging expense (with the total expense capped at a certain amount.) Those who go stay at Mom's house would not be reimbursed since they aren't out any money. It can become a PR nightmare though for residents to go without heat for an extended period of time, so you need to mitigate that as soon as possible, in my opinion.