MILWAUKEE — A broken elevator and three flights of stairs to climb, just to go home: that's the reality for many at the Melvin J. Battle Senior Living Facility off Martin Luther King Drive in Milwaukee. One person living there stopped our I-Team during this year's Juneteenth parade begging for help.
"It's been out so long," resident Helen Dobson said.
"I'm scared all the time because I don't know if I'll have a heart attack going down those stairs or coming up," Rudy Hardnet, another resident, said.
These two senior women are forced to walk the stairs to get to their rooms because the MJ Battle's main elevator is broken.
"We need our elevator," another resident Lydia Johnson said.
Johnson said she's lived at the Melvin J. Battle Senior Facility for nearly two decades. She told the I-Team that the building has two elevators and three floors, but the elevator that goes to the third floor is broken.
"They gave us a letter first saying that the elevator was going to be out of order for six to eight weeks," Johnson explained.
That letter, Johnson said, was sent in January. Nearly seven months later, still no movement on fixing the elevator, according to neighbors who live there.
"I have to pay a man that I know up on my floor. I have to pay him to carry this down for me so I can go out to make my groceries," Hardnet explained.
"It's stressful, real stressful. It's hard on my heart, I've got diabetes and high blood pressure," Dobson echoed.
Dobson and Hardnet both live on the third floor and said their concerns are growing by the minute. As are others we spoke to in early July, many of whom, are in walkers and wheelchairs. We asked the management what the hold-up was for the elevator.
We went to the management office inside MJ Battle in early July and no one answered. We called too. About a week later, we got a hold of a spokesperson for TEAM Management who runs the property.
No one would interview with us, but said when the elevator broke they learned the whole thing needed to be replaced. A spokesperson said it was a $25,000 investment that needed to be approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It's since been approved, TEAM said, but now, they're waiting on the elevator company.
So the I-Team called the elevator company tapped to replace it. The owner didn't want to do an interview either but said in an email the part needed for a new elevator should be available in about 10 weeks. It then takes another four weeks for the elevator to be up and running.
Here's the full statement the elevator company sent the I-Team:
"The elevator Melvin J. Battle is out of service because the underground hydraulic cylinder that moves the elevator up and down failed. Each underground hydraulic cylinder is specific to the building it serves based on the capacity, speed and vertical travel of the elevator. Therefore a replacement has to be custom made, by a vendor, that specializes in manufacturing elevator hydraulic cylinders. The lead time for the manufacture of a custom hydraulic cylinder is very long, and the Melvin J. Battle cylinder should arrive in approximately 10 weeks from today. After the cylinder arrives the installation of the new hydraulic cylinder and new elevator controls will take approximately 4 weeks."
Given this is a senior facility and we saw folks in wheelchairs and walkers, the I-Team reached out to several disability attorneys, the City's Accessibility Office, and Disability Rights Wisconsin. Our calls went unanswered when asking about compliance within city limits.
The I-Team will continue pushing for answers.
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