For some Queens tenants, taking the stairs feels like the safer bet.
Residents of a Long Island City rental complex say their elevators have been unreliable, loud and frightening for years — and claim people were trapped inside three separate times in just the past month.
The two rent-stabilized affordable housing buildings at Hunter’s Point South serve nearly 1,000 apartments with only nine elevators, tenants said, and many of those cars have a long history of breakdowns, sometimes leaving riders without air conditioning or a functioning intercom.
Getting stranded has become so routine that it is practically “a rite of passage,” said tenant association leader Matt Aaron, who has lived at the complex since 2018.
“If you’re stuck, too bad,” said Aaron, 37, who said the emergency call button meant to reach the front desk does not always work when residents are trapped.
“The management said they are monitoring the cameras … but the front desk staff has to attend to other duties,” he added.
“When there is a problem, they don’t take us seriously.”
Two of the nine troubled elevators were finally upgraded last month after a cable snapped in 2024, leaving a woman and child stuck between floors — but tenants said even the renovated cars have since trapped additional riders.
“None of the elevator buttons worked,” said one resident, who said she was trapped in an upgraded elevator on June 14.
She was able to use the call button to call the front desk — which allegedly alerted the elevator company before the FDNY.
“Eventually they got no response from the elevator company — makes sense, it was 11 p.m. — so they called the FDNY, and they broke me out a few minutes later,” she said.
Several residents lamented to The Post about recurring outages, leaving some lifts to only stop at certain floors. They are routinely out of service altogether, residents said.
“One of the elevators, for a good couple weeks, was literally dropping, like a bungee cord,” resident Chris Szeles said.
Szeles, 56, said she was stuck for more than an hour when the problems began 10 years ago — and now she and her husband try to avoid taking the elevators.
“My husband takes the stairs when he can now, 29 flights,” she said. “He’ll be 60 next month. I have a bad knee.”
A request for comment from the building’s management, Related Companies, was not immediately returned.
A previous tenant of the building, who moved out in 2015, said her apartment shared a wall with the elevator — and that she was kept awake by vibrations and the sound of “clinking, clanking, screws turning.”
Department of Buildings inspectors have issued at least four elevator-related violations to the development, including one as recently as April.
Residents said the perennial problem has led to late after-school pickups, 3 a.m. laundry runs and wait times of up to 45 minutes for elevators to arrive.
Aaron noted that, when the elevators are late during the morning rush, tenants must often shell out on pricey Ubers to work — and during outages, the complex’s elderly and disabled tenants are left stranded.
Longtime resident Frank Llewellyn, 77, a campaign treasurer for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, said he had to walk up to the sixth floor with “bad knees” when all elevators that went to his floor were down.
“It took me about 35 minutes,” he said, “because I do them one step at a time.”
“For people who are disabled, elevators are their lifeline,” Aaron said.
Related, which received subsidies from the city for the development, stayed silent on the issue for years until the elevator cable snapped in 2024, the tenant leader said.
Residents held a media rally soon after to advocate for the much-needed repairs, and the announced upgrades this summer served as a beacon of hope — until the most recent string of outages renewed their concerns.
“When you get in these elevators, it’s sad to say, you make sure you go to the bathroom because you don’t know how long it will take,” Aaron said.
