Apartment doesn’t want to fix burst pipe

So my friend lives in an apartment complex where there were several burst pipes and all water was shut off. The tenants are all mostly Spanish speaking people who don’t really know their rights and the apartments just told them to wait because the “city” will fix it. As far as I know the apartments are responsible but they are scared to fight back because they might get kicked out of the apartments. Do you know what can be done to report this or find out exactly what is the actual process?