Disabled trapped in apartment
A woman in Canadian woman is trapped in her apartment for three days and counting because the elevator is broken. Her apartment is on the third floor and she has no way of using the stairs to go to the grocery store or even collect her mail. Man calls have gone to the building management and the elevator repair company with no results. The building company said that the elevator was out of their jurisdiction and therefore were unable to help her. The elevator company said that because they did not know what the problem was that this elevator was low on the repair list. When the woman told the repair company that she was trapped for the last three days they said that there was nothing they could do and would not give a repair date. She then called the city disability advisory committee and let them know what had happened. Calls from the committee to the building management company and elevator companies have made some headway. The elevator was repaired for part of one day but it promptly failed again later in the day. She is hoping that the city can find a legal way of forcing someone to come out and fix the elevator.
Anytime that elevators are out is a scary time for the disabled. It is sad but not surprising that repair companies don’t care about a repair. These companies don’t seem to realize that they are trapping someone in their home until things are fixed. Until then they have to hope for people to bring them food and supplies. There is no reason for anyone to be held hostage in their home because a company doesn’t care what they are doing. We hope that the city can sue the elevator repair company to do their job and repair the elevator for good. This shows the able bodied that the disabled need help and without standard items like elevators, the disabled can be put into dangerous situations.
There must be laws in Canada that apartment dwellers can use to make the building owners fix their problems. This is a common problems in the US as well, but there is no reason to turn a building into a prison because the elevators are broken. The same goes for heat, air conditioning and any other item that is needed. Major US cities have laws in place to make building owners do the right thing, if this doesn’t exist in Canada then this is a good time for this woman to get on the phone to her parliament officials. Let them know what is going on and start working on a law to keep the disabled safe.
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