Nearly one year after an elevator outage left disabled residents at a Boston public housing complex essentially trapped in their apartments, GBH News returned to find that elevator repaired but a more widespread problem of broken and unreliable elevators at other buildings in the same complex. Residents say they feel trapped, in fear of getting stuck in an elevator or stranded in their own apartment.
“I’m paranoid, I have to go with somebody in the elevator because I’m so afraid of it,” said a resident who asked to be identified only as Sonia.
She uses a wheelchair and lives in a fifth floor apartment in the Ruth Barkley Apartments in Boston’s South End neighborhood.
“I was taking my son to school … and we got stuck, and it wouldn’t open,” said Sonia.
She said the local fire department had to open the elevator doors. It’s a long-running problem in the building.
In the first seven months of the year, Boston firefighters responded to the complex at least eight times to free people trapped in malfunctioning elevators, according to city records.
The complex is run by the Boston Housing Authority, the largest provider of housing in the city and the largest public housing authority in New England. Residents in two high rise buildings describe the same scenario: two elevators in each building — one that’s out of service and another that’s unreliable.
“[It] shuts down and it reopens and shuts down again, reopens. It’s awful,” said Sonia of the one working elevator in her building.
BHA told GBH News it plans to start repairs in the coming months but doesn’t have enough money to address all the elevator needs.
It’s part of a larger issue across the city: The BHA said one third of the 101 elevators across all its properties are at or near “end of life.”
Unreliable elevators
The elevator problems at Ruth Barkley, a complex in Boston’s South End built in 1950, have left residents like Sonia and others in despair.
“We’ve gone, we’ve called, we complain, but nobody is hearing what we have to say,” said Fred Mazyck, a resident who uses a cane and lives on the 10th floor
Residents also said elevators often shake and skip floors.
“It’s a ghost elevator. Sometimes it will go from the first floor to the 12th floor, stopping nowhere in the middle, or it’ll go on floor nine and stay there. Someone has to go to nine to bring it back down or bring it back up,” said Mazyck.
In his building, Mazyck said that one “unreliable” elevator for 13 floors and 60 units “just isn’t going to cut it.”
“There’s a lot of elderly people and a lot of disabled people like myself in the building. You know we’re not going to be on the team for track and field. We’re not going to be able to go up and down those stairs like that,” said Mazyck.
On a recent warm day Sonia was grateful that the elevator was working so she was able to take her young daughter out.
“It’s difficult for me because I can’t come out of my apartment because of the elevator, and it’s hard on my daughter because she wants to come down with me. And we have to stay upstairs because the elevator doesn’t work,” said Sonia.
One wary resident, who uses a wheelchair, said she’s been trapped multiple times in her building’s elevator. She lives on the 9th floor and described sliding down the stairs on multiple occasions when both elevators were out of service.
“We’re people, too. And just because we live in housing, we shouldn’t have to live like we’re not worth the money,” said the resident, who declined to be identified because she said she fears retaliation.
More funding needed
The BHA said one elevator at Ruth Barkley Apartments is a “long term outage” — out of service for about a year because replacement parts are no longer available. It plans to start overhauling that elevator in the coming months and will spend $6 million on elevators alone at Ruth Barkley.
But funding falls far short of needs. Fully modernizing an elevator costs between $1.5 and $5 million dollars according to the BHA. And elevators are just one of many costly major repairs needed in Boston’s public housing.
The BHA says it receives between $30 and $35 million each year from the federal government for all capital upgrades across a portfolio of 8,000 federal public housing units but estimates $1.5 billion is needed.
“This issue is symptomatic of decades of underfunding in the Public Housing program, which has resulted in crucial facilities, such as roofs, plumbing and elevators, remaining in service past their useful life,” Brian Jordan, BHA spokesperson, wrote in an emailed statement.
The BHA said it offers temporary relocations to disabled residents. Resident Sonia said several months ago she’d taken up the offer.
“I asked them if they’re going to fix the elevator. They said it’s not going to work because they don’t have the parts to it,” said Sonia. ”Then the other one shuts down. They put me in a hotel with my kids for five days. [We] come back, there’s a problem with the elevator again.”
