DNA Info – August 23, 2017
by Gwynne Hogan
BEDFORD-STUYESANT — Dozens of elderly and disabled tenants have been virtual prisoners in their upper-floor apartments of an assisted living facility for weeks due to a busted elevator and building mangers have no timeline for fixing the problem, they said.
Residents of Bridge Street A.W.M.E. Church Senior Housing at 864 Gates Ave., a six-story building with 86 apartments, lost elevator service about two weeks ago, and started calling 311, and logging complaints with the building manager to no avail, they said.
“The most important thing we need there is the elevator,” said 89-year-old Thomas Arrindell, 89, who uses a wheelchair and has a pacemaker. He’s had to cancel two appointments with his heart doctor since the elevator was shut off, he said.
Elevator service briefly came back Friday morning, said 74-year-old Angelica Figeroa, a resident of the sixth story of the building. Figeroa has used a wheelchair for the past 20 years since she had a stroke. She went out to a senior center where she takes classes and therapy, but when she got back in the afternoon, the elevator was broken again, she said.
She had to call 911 and waited two hours, and eventually four FDNY firefighters carried her up the six flights to her apartment.
“It was too much,” she said in Spanish. “I had pain in my whole body.”
Now she says, she feels like a bird locked in a cage.
“I’m trapped here, I can’t go out,” she said.
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