Bronx Elevator Complaints Lead Citywide Surge as Norwood Tenants Remain Stuck Indoors

Persistent elevator failures in New York City are trapping the most vulnerable residents, underscoring flaws in housing oversight and urban infrastructure.

Curtis Cost has not left his fourth-floor apartment on Perry Avenue, Bronx, since Thanksgiving. At 67, he relies on his motorised wheelchair. The elevator, his building’s only link to the outside world, has been inoperable for weeks. “I’m confined like a prisoner,” he told Gothamist, “and the scariest thing is I don’t know when this is going to end.” Outages at Cost’s building have become so routine that residents now count on disruption, not service. He expects to spend Christmas marooned inside, his only crime living in a city where vertical transit is as fragile as a glass lift.

The problem is not confined to one corner of New York’s vast housing lattice. This year, city dwellers logged nearly 22,000 elevator-related complaints via 311—a 30% increase since 2021. If creaking lifts are a nuisance for the able-bodied, for those with disabilities, young children, or even a well-stocked grocery bag, they are a lifeline brutally withdrawn. For 13 of the 15 buildings with the most persistent woes, the Bronx is the epicentre—a borough where ageing blocks and sparser public investment bode ill for quick solutions.

Landlords shoulder the legal burden to maintain safe, working elevators. Laws are clear. Yet, when machinery grinds to a halt, many property owners plead delay or technicality. At Cost’s 50-unit complex, managed by Parkash Management, elevator violations have stacked up—five so far this year, with little progress. The Department of Buildings issued the latest citation just weeks ago. Landlord representatives dully point to “unexpected problems” and supply-chain woes. Residents remain in limbo.

Data from the city’s building authorities paint a telling picture. While the total number of addresses filing elevator complaints citywide dipped modestly in the past year—perhaps a testament to renovated towers in Manhattan and Brooklyn—problems surged in the Bronx. Some 500 additional buildings there registered complaints since 2021. The burden falls on the backs of those least able to shoulder it: the elderly, people with disabilities, new immigrants.

Advocates say calls for help are unceasing. Sharon McLennon Wier, executive director of the Center for Independence of the Disabled New York, reports that most of the organisation’s housing queries now centre on elevators—either broken, unreliable, or outright absent. “Landlords have a responsibility to maintain equipment,” she notes flatly. “I wish I could say I have an easy fix, but there isn’t a quick remedy.” Nor, it appears, is there much political will for a structural overhaul.

The economics are not kind. Repairs for older, custom-built lifts can take weeks or months, especially when parts must be shipped from overseas manufacturers. Some landlords, notably in lower-rent neighbourhoods, may quietly welcome sluggish repairs if it means keeping maintenance costs puny. Enforcement agencies are often slow to fine repeat offenders, and collecting on those fines even slower. The city’s regulatory muscle, so robust in theory, is often mere sinew in practice.

For many building owners, the math is bleak. Maintaining elevators—especially in ageing, walkup-heavy stock—offers slim returns. Capital improvements are costly, and rent regulations limit recoupment. Yet, for tenants, particularly the 15% of New Yorkers who have mobility impairments, functioning lifts are non-negotiable. When mobility ends at the apartment door, so does access to work, family, and society itself.

Broken lifts, broken systems

The city’s elevator woes are not uniquely New York. Paris, famously vertical, has seen a similar surge in complaints as its postwar towers age. London’s council blocks are no strangers to lift outages. Yet, unlike Germany or Japan—where building codes, insurance requirements, and routine audits produce impressive reliability—New York oscillates between patch jobs and finger-pointing.

On the national stage, the issue typifies wider American urban decay: legacy infrastructures left to ossify, particularly in the outer boroughs and in neglected neighbourhoods. Federal housing grants for repairs are meagre, while funding for accessibility compliance lags chronically behind. The Americans with Disabilities Act, much celebrated, delivers little recourse for day-to-day indignities.

Policymakers have tools at their disposal. The city could expedite and publicise emergency repair orders, increase penalties for serial violators, or create a fund for urgent accessibility retrofits. Technology—a sector in which New York is rarely backward—might help. Sensors and remote diagnostics can flag outages in real time, but data alone cannot go door to door and fix ailing pulleys. Ultimately, as Ms McLennon Wier notes, only regulatory grit can move landlords to act.

Market solutions look unpromising. Tenancy protection is strong in New York, but the city’s 2.4 million rent-regulated households have little leverage over absentee landlords. Non-profit and co-operative housing has a better record, yet their reach remains tepid. One quiet irony: the glossier new high-rises of Manhattan enjoy state-of-the-art lifts and round-the-clock repair staff, while those stacking shopping bags to reach fifth-floor walkups (or stranded altogether) get nothing but voicemails.

A city as vertical as New York ignores elevators at its peril. The post-pandemic age, with its focus on remote work, has reduced daily commutes but increased the time citizens spend inside their apartments. When basic infrastructure fails, so does the city’s promise of upward mobility—social as well as literal.

For now, the plight of Curtis Cost and thousands like him serves as a cautionary tale. Cities that do not maintain their hidden machinery risk marooning their most vulnerable, with consequences stretching far beyond a single broken cable. As a city and as a polity, New York must decide whether it values accessibility as an aspiration or as a daily, functional right. Until then, its elevators—much like its political resolve—will remain stuck between floors. ■