Theo Wells-Spackman is a Report for America corps member who reports for VTDigger.org.
Residents and advocates are raising the alarm over an elevator that has been unusable for over two months in a Montpelier subsidized housing complex primarily for older adults.
Zach Hughes, a resident of the Prospect Street building for nearly 23 years who advocates for disability and mental health issues, said the malfunction has caused major problems for residents on upper floors with mobility challenges.
“We obviously have people with adaptive equipment and wheelchairs here,” he said.
Hughes said he knew of at least one resident who hadn’t been able to leave their floor of the building at all since July, and suspected there might be more. Others, he said, have made the climb up and down only rarely and with extreme difficulty. It’s not the only Montpelier subsidized or affordable housing complex to be affected by long-running elevator issues, he added.
“What if one of them fell?” he said of his affected neighbors. “I was really concerned.”
Hughes noted that the local fire department had been notified of the situation, and that assistance had been provided to residents struggling with the stairs. Though he was encouraged this week to see people working on the machinery, he said several estimated repair timelines had come and gone.
Jo Ann Troiano, executive director of the Montpelier Housing Authority, which runs the building, said her office had been doing the best it could to facilitate a speedy repair in cooperation with Otis, the elevator’s manufacturer.
She acknowledged that because of the age of some elevators, companies “can’t readily get the parts.”
All the same, she said she has sometimes struggled to reach Otis employees, and that maintenance visits had become relatively infrequent. Both are problems she experienced less frequently when working with smaller companies in the past.
Otis had promised to have the elevator repaired by the end of the week, Troiano and residents said, but on Friday evening the machinery was still out of order.
“I’m disappointed that they can’t see it as the priority I do,” Troiano said.
“Otis is aware of the situation and we are working to get the elevator in service as quickly as possible,” a spokesperson for the elevator company said Friday. “Two key parts required for the project were on backorder and took longer than expected to arrive. … We have been working onsite to complete the project. There is nothing more important to Otis than the safety of our customers, employees and the riding public.”
Karen Topper, the administrative director of Green Mountain Self-Advocates, spoke on behalf of another Prospect Street resident who wished to remain anonymous.
“They’ve been trapped up there,” Topper said of some residents’ situation.
Topper acknowledged the complications of elevator repairs but said residents could only reasonably be asked to wait for so long.
“There’s got to be an end point for this,” she said. “Enough is enough.”
Hughes, who uses a wheelchair, said his main goal was to get the word out. Incidents like these are not uncommon in local affordable and subsidized housing complexes, he said.
Dianne Richardson, a resident of a different multistory affordable housing complex on Main Street in Montpelier, said that her elevator had broken down several times over the past couple of years. Two malfunctions had lasted months, she said, though one was a result of the July 2023 floods that ravaged the state. The outages had significantly affected older residents and those who use strollers, walkers or wheelchairs, she said.
Richardson, at 71, uses a cane and said she had sometimes turned back from trips out of her apartment when she saw the elevator was down.
“Sometimes my neighbors would help me carry groceries up, but it was hard — I’d have to do it one step at a time,” Richardson said.
Hughes said he wondered whether more frequent elevator inspections could catch issues earlier and shorten repair times. The breakdown had also illustrated the importance of ground-floor accommodations for people in wheelchairs, he said, particularly in smaller, single-elevator buildings.
“I just think awareness is important, because I think people don’t really think about that stuff,” Hughes said.
