by Kirby Lindsay, posted 11 January 2013
Built in 1982, Fremont Place, a Seattle Housing Authority senior housing apartment building, stands four-stories tall, located at the northwest corner of Phinney Avenue N & N 46th Street.
The building location is ideal for active seniors – on two major bus routes, near to Woodland Park Zoo, with easy access to shopping in Ballard, Greenwood, and Fremont. Also, tenants pay below market rate rent – with the rate set by their income level.
All in all, the building is a very attractive place to live…in spite of the frequent failures of the elevator – and the ever-present possibility residents on the upper floors face of having to take the stairs without warning.
Have Cane, Will Climb?
Rose Cornicello moved into Fremont Place in December of 2003. She likes her unit, which she keeps scrupulously tidy, and she does not want to move. At 92 years old, she remains very active, enjoying frequent visits to friends and volunteer activities. Lately she has added to her routine daily trips across the street to visit a terminally ill friend (and former Fremont Place resident) at Columbia Lutheran Home.
Cornicello goes out every day, using her cane, knowing she may have to take the stairs – three flights down and/or three flights up – even if she carries groceries. She prefers the agony of the climb, she acknowledged, over the fear and wait of being stuck inside the elevator when it stops working. Of course, it all paled alongside her recent fears raised when electrical wires inside the elevator shaft started smoking.
“I never know,” Cornicello said recently. “I don’t like it when I come home from shopping,” she acknowledged, “and I’ve got to walk up the stairs.” Cornicello must navigate the stairs then with her bags, and her cane. “The cane goes with me wherever I am,” she said.
According to Cornicello, the elevator malfunctions more frequently now than when she moved in, about once or twice a month. According to another resident, who has been at Fremont Place for over a decade, the elevator has been a problem the whole time – for a decade.
Taking Steps
This other resident, whom we’ll call ‘Ms. P’, wished to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by Seattle Housing staff. Yet, she has not been shy, she reported, about calling Seattle Housing when the elevator won’t work – or calling directly to the repair service.
Michelle Ackermann, the Director of Communications for Seattle Housing Authority, acknowledged that while it isn’t policy, “we’ve even empowered some residents to call,” the repair company. “We take this situation very seriously,” she said. “The life expectancy of elevators in low-rise buildings is 30 – 35 years,” Ackermann said, “we do know these elevators are going to have problems.”
“We’ve begun taking the steps,” Ackermann explained, to find a permanent replacement of the existing elevator. According to her, the replacement work will go out for bid in the 1st quarter of 2013, with installation expected to be scheduled for the 3rd quarter.
Argument for Ground Floor
“They keep promising a new elevator,” Cornicello quipped, “but they keep forgetting to say which year.” Both residents who went on the record raised concerns about the patchwork repairs, especially since the elevator often breaks down on weekends. “It’s costing [Seattle Housing] an arm and a leg for the repairs,” Ms. P observed.
Cornicello’s son, John, has researched elevator problems on behalf of his mother, and he found several news stories about elevator malfunctions in senior living buildings. It isn’t a unique problem, and every story raises troubling questions. The elderly residents of the 3-story McKinley Terrace apartments in Tacoma survived 2 ½ months without elevator service, according to The Tacoma News Tribune. In Campbell, California, both elevators in a 12-story senior housing complex broke down over a long holiday weekend last year, according to ABC7 News. The most disturbing, the story of the hearty souls of the 25-story Kingsborough Extension building in Brooklyn, New York who regularly climbed a dozen or more flights due to intermittent elevator failures, as reported by the New York Times.
Before It Fails Again
According to Cornicello, one family moved ‘mother’ out of Fremont Place due to the condition of the elevator, but otherwise she and Ms. P haven’t seen the outages lessen the popularity of the building.
“I have a wonderful view,” Ms. P said of her unit, “I have become attached.” She could move, she acknowledged, but instead she’s planning to pay personally for some unit upgrades. Even though, in her 80s and with a hip replacement, it takes her half an hour to climb the stairs to her apartment.
“I like my apartment,” Cornicello said. She has felt pressure to give up her apartment by a Seattle Housing representative, due to her very vocal complaints about the elevator service. Yet, she won’t go. “Let them try,” she said about any efforts to relocate her.
Her son does advise caution. Replacement of the elevator could cause more hardships. Ackermann confirmed, “The average time it takes to replace an elevator is 6 – 8 weeks.” Also, what Cornicello felt as pressure to move may have been a sincere, but awkward, effort to assess her needs. According to Ackermann, staffers have begun surveying the individual needs of Fremont Place residents. “We need to figure out, person-by-person,” she explained, “what they will need for that time, to understand what their options are.”
For now, repairs continue to be done in an effort to keep the elevator going, and allow residents to move up and down. “It’s almost time to have it go out again,” Ms. P observed in early January 2013. The elevator failures have developed their own timetable at Fremont Place, but hopefully not for much longer…
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©2013 Kirby Lindsay. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Reproduction, adaptation or distribution without permission is prohibited.