Excerpt from an article that appeared on Westword by Catie Cheshire on June 29, 2024.

Nathan Cummings compares living at the Lincoln at Speer apartment complex to American Horror Story or Squid Game.

“We need help,” he says.

Those pleas are largely because elevators in the ten-story building at 1200 Galapago Street only work some of the time, according to residents, and one residential elevator has been inoperable for months.

The other residential elevator has been in and out of operation for the last month, Cummings says, forcing residents to have to use the unventilated freight elevator. Last week the freight elevator was broken, too, leaving tenants facing the stairs in 100-degree weather — once they could get in there. Elevators are designed to be the only point of entry to floors two through ten, Cummings says, and the stairs weren’t accessible from the ground floor area until recently.

Though management called in a repair to get one residential and one freight elevator working again on June 27, Cummings doubts how long those repairs will last, since previous fixes haven’t held up for long.

“Both times I bet that it would break again in 48 hours,” Cummings says. “I gave them too much credit. It broke within 24 hours every time.”

According to Cummings, there is no email notification or signage indicating when the elevators aren’t working, causing residents to wait for a long time before realizing the problem. And when only one elevator is servicing the 200-plus units in the building, service is slow.

“They go up but they won’t come down,” Pinson says of the unpredictability of the elevators.

Cummings says he hasn’t been able to walk his dog as often because of the elevator situation. Pinson says his dog has thrown up four or five times because of the stairs combined with a lack of air conditioning across the building, including in his apartment, where he says the air conditioning currently doesn’t work.

In a statement, Lincoln at Speer spokesperson Kari Hegarty says the building has been experiencing intermittent issues with several elevators over the last few weeks.

“We immediately called our elevator company and placed an expedited order for needed replacement parts to be delivered,” the statement adds. “We will continue to work closely with the mechanics until we can get the situation rectified. Tenant safety is our number one priority. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we work expeditiously to fix the problem.”

But residents are growing tired of waiting. Cummings pays $1,300 for his one-bedroom unit. Pinson pays even more, and neither is pleased with what they’re getting in return.

Read the full article here: Westword.com | Image credit: Catie Cheshire