NORTHAMPTON — After months with one of its two elevators out of service, the Walter Salvo House lost its only working elevator for more than five hours last Thursday, trapping some elderly and disabled residents in the seven-story public housing building.
The outage raised frustrations among residents about health and safety at the Northampton Housing Authority property on Conz Street, with many citing ongoing concerns ranging from elevator reliability to pest infestations and maintenance issues.
According to NHA Acting Executive Director Sharon Kimble, one of the elevators was repaired and back in service by about 7 p.m. Thursday. Earlier that afternoon, however, residents such as Larry Millet, who uses a mobility scooter and lives on the second floor, were stranded outside the building and unable to access their apartments.
“There are people who are really bad off trapped up there — [residents who are] bedridden or with wheelchairs and walkers … on the sixth and seventh [floors], they’re unlikely to get out,” Millet said Thursday afternoon while waiting for an elevator to be repaired. “I’m on the second floor and I can’t make it up to my apartment.”
Resident Weldon Yarborough, who had recently undergone a hip surgery and was advised by his doctor not to walk up stairs, said after the first elevator had broken down months ago, he foresaw the second elevator’s failure.
Yarborough, who said he was homeless prior to his move to the NHA property last October, said poor health and safety conditions at the home led him to consider moving out.
“With that other elevator being broken down for two months, and that one getting double usage, it was bound to break, and look, the day finally came,” Yarborough said. “Since I’ve moved in in October, everything’s been falling apart. First, it was the elevators, then the trash compactor and then we’ve had an increase in cockroaches… Just recently, I was locked in my apartment because of the door. I was actually locked in because the mechanism broke and maintenance had to cross over from the balcony to go into my apartment from the outside and take apart the door.”
In an interview Friday, Kimble said she had worried the building’s remaining elevator would fail after the other elevator was taken out of service for repairs.
Kimble noted that Thursday’s elevator breakdown prompted an all-hands-on-deck repair response, in which she called the Fire Department, KONE Elevators and NHA maintenance immediately. She said the elevator’s failure was largely caused by two burned fuses — a “very common” culprit for elevator failure.
“It was always in my mind ‘what happens when the other elevator goes?’ and sure enough, it did while I was on vacation,” she said. “Right away, I contacted my staff and I got on it … I got the staff that went right into full-force mode. We already had a plan; if this was to happen, I wanted a maintenance person on every single floor for emergency to make sure the tenants were going to be OK … We have 192 units in that building.”
Discussing repair of the first elevator, which residents said has been out of commission for months, Kimble explained that through a capital request, she has been able to secure a replacement of its door panel — a project that she said is expected to be complete in a few weeks.
Kimble became the NHA’s acting executive director last September following the resignation of former director Cara Leiper. She is one of the finalists for the permanent position, which the Housing Authority’s board is currently in the process of filling.
She went on to respond to residents’ reports of poor maintenance and management at the property, explaining that while she would not comment on personnel-related issues, she prioritizes accountability and transparency in her operation of the housing authority.
“I cannot talk about personnel, but I can tell you, since my temporary administration, I’ve made changes, and a lot of the changes had to do with accountability, had to do with changing how maintenance is allowed to go and purchase stuff, to have the director of maintenance be the only one that had control of that,” Kimble said. ” I made a lot of internal changes that maybe weren’t liked by some… I hope that other people can see through [these accusations of mismanagement] — that this is not the true progress and the true reality of what’s happening.”
Kimble explained that she has, in her leadership of the NHA, tried to bolster the authority’s maintenance staff in an effort bring units up-to-code to fill vacancies.
