Jeanie Chase remembers crying a lot in December and January.
It was the holiday season — a time for merriment and to see family. But Chase couldn’t see anyone. She couldn’t even leave her Denver apartment.
For two weeks, both elevators at the Avondale Apartments, an affordable housing complex at 3275 W. 14th Ave., didn’t work, stranding disabled and elderly residents in their homes.
Chase has been in a wheelchair since 2009, the result of a nerve condition that leaves her unable to walk.
Living on the fifth floor means she relies on the elevators for her livelihood. She missed vet appointments for her dog Daisy and physical therapy sessions that left her neck and body aching. She couldn’t go to lunch and the zoo with her son.
“I got really depressed,” Chase said. “It felt like everything in my life was taken away from me and there was nothing I could do.”
Both elevators at Avondale have expired certificates of operation, with one elevator last inspected in October 2023. Denver law mandates that elevators be inspected by a third-party service at least once a year in order to renew those certificates.
The Denver Fire Department, which oversees conveyances in the city, warns that noncompliance will result in officials shutting down elevators and issuing summonses to appear in court. The problem: Denver Fire hasn’t actually done that in at least five years, a department spokesperson said.
Elevators across the city are trapping people inside or are otherwise inoperable, and conveyance regulators aren’t doing enough to ensure they’re working properly and safely, a Denver Post investigation found. The Denver Fire Department responded to 3,481 elevator rescue calls since the start of last year, and the newspaper reviewed the 30 addresses with the most elevator entrapments. In 10 of those cases, or 33%, one or more of the elevators had expired certificates of operation.
Despite fire officials occasionally issuing landlords orders to comply, the same elevators continue to malfunction repeatedly, The Post found. Denver firefighters received 43 elevator rescue calls at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center over the past 18 months. A downtown hotel, the Hilton at the Colorado Convention Center, saw 28 rescue calls during the same period. A public housing building in the Baker neighborhood necessitated 23 responses.
The Post focused on residential properties because of the direct impact on tenants, and since larger commercial buildings normally have multiple elevators.
“Tons of city resources are being used to subsidize landlords who’ve chosen a deferred maintenance strategy,” said Therese Kerr, an independent private investigator who has worked on multiple cases involving repeated elevator failures at residential buildings.
When an elevator breaks but doesn’t require firefighters to respond, the department never gets notified. It’s not clear whether any city agency ever hears about it.
Denver fire officials, in interviews, said noncompliance is rare and that the department normally handles enforcement through conversations with landlords. The department issued 364 orders to comply since the start of last year.
“Denver Fire strives to collaborate with property owners,” Luis Cedillo, a department spokesperson, said in an email.
Frequent responses to same buildings
Records provided by Denver Fire show the department receives repeated calls for elevator entrapments at the same addresses — many of which have expired certificates of operation.
Firefighters have responded to the Hirschfeld Towers public housing complex in Baker on elevator rescue calls 23 times since the start of last year, including three times in a 12-day period in November.
City conveyance regulators issued the building’s management an order to comply on April 9, 2024, citing multiple violations related to a malfunctioning elevator. The order informs the landlord that the elevator in question has been removed from service and can only be placed back into operation by a conveyance mechanic.
The order also states Denver Fire’s conveyance team must be notified by the landlord within 24 hours of any elevator entrapment.
The fire department issues these notices to “create awareness for the ownership that there is a problem and that they need to get this fixed,” Cedillo said. Fire officials have the discretion to write an order to comply to address a wide array of elevator issues. The department then follows up with the owner to make sure changes are implemented.
“We can take enforcement further, but we haven’t done that in years,” said Michael Stewart, Denver Fire’s conveyance program manager, in an interview. “Most of the time, we can do it through conversation. We don’t get a lot of noncompliance. Most times, we just have a conversation and they realize, ‘Oh, it fell through the cracks and we’ll get in compliance.’ ”
The reality, though, is that fire crews end up responding over and over again to the same places.
Eight days after the Hirschfeld Towers order, firefighters returned to 333 W. Ellsworth Ave. on an elevator rescue call. Three days after that, they came back on another call.
On June 10, 2024, regulators issued another order to comply. Less than a week later, fire crews returned to Hirschfeld Towers.
The building has two elevators, one of which has had an expired certificate of operation since April, records show. That elevator did receive a conveyance alteration permit in January that expired Wednesday. The other elevator received a passing inspection in April.
Residents told The Post that one of the elevators was broken for more than a year, leaving only one working lift for the entire 209-unit building. Sometimes, for days, neither was operational, stranding disabled residents on higher floors. Other times, residents were trapped in the elevators for long periods of time until the fire department showed up.
“I’m having panic attacks, high anxiety,” said Jerry Gonzalez, who lives on the ninth floor, describing being trapped in an elevator for 30 minutes at a time.
Stephanie Schiemann, a Denver Housing Authority spokesperson, said elevator parts are increasingly difficult to source, calling supply issues “frustrating and expensive.”
Both elevators at Hirschfeld Towers required full system rebuilds, with a total cost of $865,000. One elevator was taken offline earlier this year and has been fully operational since April, she said, while the second elevator is currently undergoing its rebuild, with completion expected by mid-July.
“We understand how critical elevator access is, especially for our elderly and disabled residents, and we regret any inconvenience caused,” Schiemann said in an email. “We took every possible measure to maintain access and avoid prolonged service interruptions. Resident well-being remains our top priority.”
At the Meridian Garden Apartments, 1001 S. Havana St., firefighters responded to 19 calls for elevator entrapments since the beginning of last year, including two days in a row in October. Both elevators have expired certificates of operation, records show — one since October and the other since March.
The building’s management, Maxx Properties, said the complex in January transitioned to a new elevator maintenance vendor “due to ongoing concerns about the quality of service from the previous vendor and their inability to remedy issues potentially resulting in stall or other failure incidents.” Management removed one of the elevators from service pending repairs.
The company called the expired certificates of operation an “administrative issue” that remains outstanding. These administrative errors will be resolved during an upcoming inspection this month, Maxx Properties said.
Disabled residents left stranded
At Avondale, the malfunctioning elevators have serious consequences for disabled residents.
Freda Lysaker moved into the 80-unit building in the West Colfax neighborhood in 2018. And for the first two years, she said, everything was beautiful and working.
Then the elevators started breaking down, seemingly every week. The building’s management, Del Norte Neighborhood Development Corporation, stopped taking care of the entire complex, Lysaker said.
The 67-year-old suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which makes it difficult for her to breathe. She’s connected to a five-liter oxygen tank and can’t stand in one spot without leaning on her walker. The elevators are the only way Lysaker can make it to her fifth-floor unit.
Four months ago, both elevators went down for hours. Lysker needed to get back to her apartment, so, with the help of three firefighters, she started crawling up the stairs. It took her 35 minutes to climb the steps as she stopped frequently to gasp for breath. By the time she made it up, she had tears in her eyes.
“I didn’t think I was gonna make it,” Lysaker recalled. “I thought I was gonna die.”
Like Chase, she was stranded in her apartment for nearly two weeks over the holidays. Unable to go on grocery runs, she relied on her daughter to send food deliveries. But the delivery people often left the food on the bottom floor, allowing unhoused people sheltering in the building to snatch it.
“I starved mostly,” she said.
Lysaker canceled doctor appointments and couldn’t pick up her medicine. She missed Sunday church. Panic attacks set in as she stayed cooped up in her home.
“I’m not a criminal,” she said. “I should not be locked away. It’s not right.”
Tammie Carroll, executive director for Del Norte, said there has only been one time when both elevators were down simultaneously. All tenants with mobility issues were notified and offered temporary relocation, she said. Only one tenant chose that option, while those who remained in their homes were given rent credits.
But having an up-to-date certificate of operation doesn’t ensure elevators are running smoothly.
Retreat at Water’s Edge, 9999 E. Yale Ave., has valid permits but has still seen 17 calls for elevator rescues since last year.
In January, March, July and September, Denver Fire regulators issued the building’s management orders to comply. In the last citation, fire officials noted that one elevator had been broken for three days without any response, preventing disabled people from going to and from their apartments.
Building management did not respond to requests for comment.
At The Lincoln at Speer, 1200 Galapago St., crews have responded 19 times since last year for elevator entrapment calls at one building and 11 times to a neighboring building in the same complex. Elevators in both buildings have valid certificates to operate.
Last year, the 10-story building in Lincoln Park went a week without working elevators during a scorching heat wave. One of the elevators had been broken for a long time, residents told Denverite, while another was fixed twice — only to break again.
Josh Harris, a 10th-floor resident, told The Post he calls one of the lifts “the elevator of death” due to its constant rattling. He takes the elevator anyway, but said he worries about the disabled residents who can’t take the stairs.
The building’s management, in a statement, said the complex experienced “intermittent service issues” with the elevators, a situation “exacerbated by extreme weather conditions.” Ownership is in the process of making significant investments in the elevator systems in all three buildings, the statement read, and all buildings currently have working elevators.
City oversight ‘still too fragmented and weak’
Elevators represent a major habitability factor for residents, but they fall through the cracks in Denver’s regulatory scheme.
All residential rental properties are required by the city to be inspected by a third-party entity. These inspectors grade the property on a variety of criteria, including fire safety, foundational integrity, trash and pest control.
Elevators, however, do not appear on the checklist.
Kerr, the private investigator, said this is a missed opportunity for the city to catch problematic buildings during these inspections.
She recognizes that the fire department, when weighing whether to shut down an elevator, has to balance safety concerns with the ramifications of stranding people who rely on the lifts for their livelihood.
Kerr compared the lack of elevator enforcement with the city’s crackdown on parking tickets. If you don’t pay those tickets right away, the cost escalates quickly. After enough unpaid tickets, the city boots your car.
“Where is that when it comes to protecting people and ensuring they’re provided safe and healthy housing?” she said.
The fire department has to issue a court summons every so often so landlords see that it hurts their bottom line to have noncompliant elevators, Kerr said.
“Anytime I get into an elevator, I have no reason to trust that it’s up to code,” she said.
Denver City Councilwoman Sarah Parady said she’s heard from several constituents recently who have struggled to get a response to dangerous elevator outages. She said she’s “concerned that our regulatory structure is not working.”
“The city has made huge changes in how we oversee tenant safety, but that oversight is still too fragmented and weak in many areas,” Parady said.
Chase and Lysaker, meanwhile, joined a lawsuit earlier this month alleging the Avondale Apartments’ owners have violated Colorado’s warranty of habitability statute and the Colorado Fair Housing Act.
The property’s management has let them down, Chase said, and so has the city.
“They’re supposed to be taking care of this,” she said. “They’re not doing a great job.”
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