QUEENS — Virginia Peters, 80, has not left her sixth-floor apartment since Dec. 7.
That’s when the elevator in her building on Austin Street, near 84th Road, in Kew Gardens was taken out of service for a major overhaul.
“I have bad knees and very bad sight,” she said. “If I go downstairs, I won’t be able to go back up.”
Her husband, 82-year old Korean War veteran Ronald Peters, who is also unable to climb stairs, was forced to temporarily move to a Holiday Inn near the Veterans Hospital in Brooklyn where he had a number of appointments scheduled for December and January, she said.
“He will come back when the elevator is fixed,” Peters said about her husband who suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure, among other illnesses.
But the elevator won’t be working until Jan. 21, according to signs posted in the lobby.
On Tuesday morning, two men, who worked on the elevator, said that “it’s a 6-week job."
The tenants, a lot of them seniors with disabilities, said that the repairs were badly needed, since the elevator, which had been in the building since it opened in the 1950s, was old and broke down often.
But they said the timing — in the middle of the holiday season — was poorly chosen, making it difficult for them to visit their families or even to pick up packages, which delivery companies have been leaving in the lobby with the elevator not operating, they said.
They also said that the building's management company should do more to assist them.
“The landlord should have had somebody here to help us,” Peters said. She said her daughter brings her groceries every couple of days.
But Peters has been unable to take her two dogs out for a walk and she has to use wee-wee pads for them, she said.
Another 87-year-old tenant who did not want his name to be used, said that he had asked the management “on three occasions to just put chairs on the landings so people could stop and just rest for a few minutes."
But his pleas were ignored, he said.
The man, who lives on the third floor, also urged the management to expedite the process.
“They could have paid extra money, have them work at night, have them work around the clock, get the job done so that the people would be able to function,” he said, adding that he left his apartment only once since the work started and it took him about 15 minutes to go back to his apartment.
“I’ve been a prisoner for 3 weeks here,” he said.
Residents also said that an 87-year-old woman was taken to a hospital over the weekend after climbing the stairs to get to her third-floor apartment.
The building's management company PSRS Realty Group did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The issue was first reported by NY1.
