Several older residents hardly go outside anymore and a mother with two small children has now temporarily moved elsewhere. “I really don’t think this is possible,” says a resident. “It’s terrible, we’ve been without a lift for four weeks, so we’re exhausted from carrying around,” says another.
Everything is going wrong
Ymere says that solving the problem is more difficult than expected and that parts are not or hardly available. “This is really one of those cases where once things go wrong, just about everything goes wrong,” says Walter Louman, regional manager of Ymere at their website.
Howard Cladder lives on the ninth floor and says that he now has major back problems from climbing the stairs so many times. “My quality of life has deteriorated significantly. I’m thinking about moving, it’s really terrible. We are being sent from pillar to post.”
Stair lift on every floor
The apartment has ten floors, so residents living on the highest floors have to climb quite a few stairs. Ymere has now installed a stair lift on every floor. “It’s really painfully slow,” says Cladder. Another resident says it takes about fifty minutes to get downstairs with the stair lift.
The lift failures have been a thorn in the side of the municipal council for some time, and that is why the housing associations had to provide text and explanation to the council members. The city council believes that the corporations must come up with structural solutions.
“We do everything we can to limit the influence of a broken elevator on the normal lives of residents,” says Louman. A hotel or temporary accommodation is possible for residents who need it, Ymere says.
