Report Questions Elevator Safety in Public Housing

Harlem residents voiced concerns about elevators in light of a report released Friday by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, which revealed that 70 percent of New York City Housing Authority elevators in Manhattan were “unsatisfactory.”

“The elevators are always out, and no one comes in the proper time frame to repair them,” said Sarah Martin, tenant leader of the Grant Houses, a NYCHA complex located in West Harlem between 123rd and 125th Streets. Martin and other tenants spoke at a public hearing on the issue Friday evening.

NYCHA residents, who are typically elderly and low-income, also mentioned more serious hazards, like having to jump from an elevator stalled between two floors above a several-story shaft. They said asthmatics climb 15 flights of stairs when elevators don’t come, and elderly and handicapped persons are sometimes hit by closing elevator doors.

“NYCHA has Department of Buildings-certified inspectors who report if an elevator is satisfactory or unsatisfactory,” NYCHA spokesperson Howard Marder said. “If an elevator is deemed ‘unsatisfactory,’ the problems are usually minor. There could just be dirt on the floor or the button lights not working.”

Marder maintained that NYCHA fixes “unsatisfactory” elevators as quickly as possible.
But Stringer asserted that the problems are much more alarming than NYCHA states.

“It could be a broken light bulb or a broken window in the elevator, or it could be something much more serious,” Stringer said at the hearing. “What’s considered a minor infraction leads to something more serious if it’s never repaired or corrected.”

A number of residents also complained about temporary fixes that leave underlying problems unresolved.

“When one breaks down, you have to call, and somebody comes out in maybe three, four, five hours. They fix it, and then it breaks down again the next morning,” said Katie Harris, tenant association president for the Wagner Houses in East Harlem, in a report released by Stringer.

Some officials attributed the problems to the city’s fiscal crisis.

“It is true that NYCHA has a budget shortfall from being short-changed in every level of government,” U.S. Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan) said. But Stringer’s report “reveals a breakdown that goes beyond budgets, and it is inexcusable to cut corners that cost lives,” Nadler said.

The report, based on data gathered over the past five years, examined public records of elevator inspections NYCHA conducted in its buildings in all five boroughs. Manhattan had the third highest elevator failure ratings.

The study was released just over a month after the death of five-year-old Jacob Neuman, who fell down the shaft of a stalled elevator when the doors opened at the Taylor-Wythe NYCHA development in Brooklyn.

Present at the hearing were a handful of elected officials, including City Council members Gale Brewer and Miguel Martinez, who vowed to work with Stringer to create local laws “that will require more of NYCHA in terms of the elevators and the safety of tenants overall in the buildings,” Martinez said.

“All we want is just a safe elevator that takes us up and down to where we need to go,” Martin said.

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