Some have not received needed repairs since 1995
After a long day of work on a recent, crisp Sunday evening, Pamela Smith came home to a familiar problem: both elevators in her building at the Mitchel Houses were out. Instead of climbing the 14 flights of stairs, Smith, a unit clerk at a psychiatric facility, called management and waited in the lobby with her neighbors until they were fixed, which took a little over an hour—about half the time it usually takes, according to residents at the NYCHA complex on 138th Street and Alexander Ave.
Smith, who is the Tenant Association president, says that she can understand why it takes so long for the repairmen to fix the elevators; once they arrive they have to walk up to the top of the building, 20 stories, to get to the engine in need of repair. This is a routine that occurs at Mitchel Houses at least once a week, tenants say.
For the lucky ones, broken elevators just add frustration to an already long day. For those dependent on the elevators to exit or enter the building, however, such as the elderly or disabled, they can mean missed appointments, cancelled meetings with social service providers, or otherwise interrupted daily routines.
Keosha Stokes, a 24-year-old with cerebral palsy, is confined to a wheelchair and can’t get down the ten flights of stairs from her apartment. When the elevators are out she is forced to miss her day program.
“When she stays home of course it affects my day,” said her mother, Roxanne. When Keosha is stuck at home, Roxanne is too.
It’s not just a problem for residents; service providers in the area are also affected. Taisha Meranda, a clerk at a local pharmacy, said her pharmacy is often unable to deliver medicine to customers in local NYCHA buildings because of nonworking elevators. At nearby Uptown Medical Group missing an appointment because of a broken elevator is, “An issue that occurs very, very frequently,” said office manager Iris Marti.
Many residents grapple with the fear of getting trapped inside one of the building’s broken elevators, which are often filthy, and smell of urine or stale soda. Mitchel House resident Geneen Pinckney remembers a day well when, two years ago, her then 4-year-old and 15-year-old sons were in an elevator that broke between the seventh and eighth floors.
“I panicked, I think I did more hyperventilating than he did,” said Pinckney, referring to her youngest, who suffers from asthma. “My husband went and got a sledge hammer and pried the elevator just enough so that the kids could breathe.” To this day her son is afraid to use the elevator on his own, she added.
When someone is stuck in an elevator, the housing cops from the PSA-7 stationhouse on Melrose Ave. are called.
Yet despite tenant complaints and the frequency of breakdowns in the Mitchel Houses elevators, only one of the four NYCHA elevator inspections conducted in the complex’s 11 buildings in the past year resulted in “unsatisfactory” remarks according to the Department of Building’s website.
The elevators in the Mitchel Houses, like most NYCHA complexes, have not been replaced in a long time. The last time they were “modernized,” meaning given more than a Band-Aid repair, was 1995 according to NYCHA spokeswoman Zodet Negron. Such a renovation would come out of the Housing Authority’s major capital repair budget, which is federally funded. Since 2001 the agency’s annual capital funding has been cut nearly in half to $258 million last year. There is no capital funding allocated to replacing them right now, Negron said, adding the agency is aware of the problem and is looking for funding to address it.
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