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Broken elevators plague seniors, disabled in SROs
http://48hills.org/2016/05/22/broken-elevators-plague-seniors-disabled-sros/SRO (Single Room Occupancy) hotels provide housing for many low-income seniors and people with disabilities in San Francisco. Given the city’s affordability crisis, caused in large measure by policies that have allowed evictions and displacement to rise while the real estate industry grows richer, the seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income San Franciscans suffer. The city essentially subsidizes real estate interests while seniors and people with disabilities shoulder the burden.
SRO elevators provide a lifeline for seniors and people with disabilities to the outside world. When the elevators don’t work, it creates a multilayered set of problems that affects health, social, and safety aspects of the lives of the tenants.
San Francisco’s SRO’s are old. Many buildings were constructed in the early part of the century. These buildings were primarily constructed as housing for a primarily transient workforce—complete with shared kitchens and bathrooms. As time has passed, SRO groups and tenants worked on a detailed survey and report on quality of life issues that seniors and people with disabilities face in SRO hotels. The survey found that elevators that were not working or in a frequent state of disrepair was an ongoing issue that had profound effects on the quality of life of SRO tenants.
Residents talked about being stranded in their rooms for weeks or even months, not able to get to doctor’s appointments, buy food, or simply connect with another human being. One resident shared a harrowing experience of being stuck in an elevator for hours, without food or drink. SRO tenants in Soma recently held an elevator advocacy workshop at the office of Senior and Disability Action to share stories about their experiences as seniors and people with disabilities with non-working elevators.
SRO elevators provide a lifeline for seniors and people with disabilities to the outside world. When the elevators don’t work, it creates a multilayered set of problems that affects health, social, and safety aspects of the lives of the tenants.
San Francisco’s SRO’s are old. Many buildings were constructed in the early part of the century. These buildings were primarily constructed as housing for a primarily transient workforce—complete with shared kitchens and bathrooms. As time has passed, SRO groups and tenants worked on a detailed survey and report on quality of life issues that seniors and people with disabilities face in SRO hotels. The survey found that elevators that were not working or in a frequent state of disrepair was an ongoing issue that had profound effects on the quality of life of SRO tenants.
Residents talked about being stranded in their rooms for weeks or even months, not able to get to doctor’s appointments, buy food, or simply connect with another human being. One resident shared a harrowing experience of being stuck in an elevator for hours, without food or drink. SRO tenants in Soma recently held an elevator advocacy workshop at the office of Senior and Disability Action to share stories about their experiences as seniors and people with disabilities with non-working elevators.
This has also happened to two disabled people I know in regular apartments, not to mention in SF public housing. 
