Residents at The Portland say a broken elevator has left some unable to leave their apartments, raising concerns about safety.<\/p>\n
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Residents at The Portland, an income-restricted affordable apartment building in St. Petersburg, say they are growing frustrated after an elevator outage that has stretched on for several days, leaving some unable to leave their homes.<\/p>\n
For those living on upper floors, the outage has turned routine tasks into major challenges.<\/p>\n
Greg Wasmund, who lives on the 12th floor, said getting home now means climbing 176 steps each way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes me 35 minutes to an hour to get back up because I don\u2019t have the physical strength. I\u2019m 65, I have physical ailments. I\u2019m on disability,\u201d Wasmund said.<\/p>\n
The elevator has been out of service since Monday after flooding damaged key components, leaving residents with no easy way to move between floors.<\/p>\n
Wasmund said the outage is affecting his ability to get to regular medical appointments.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have doctors appointments, several, a week and now I feel like I can\u2019t get to them. We\u2019re stranded here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also expressed concern for other residents who may be in worse condition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s people worse off than me that can\u2019t walk up here and on other floors,\u201d Wasmund said.<\/p>\n
Residents say they got one email about the outage on Tuesday but nothing since.<\/p>\n
10 Tampa Bay News reached out to the Pinellas County Housing Authority, which owns the building. A spokesperson said replacement parts are expected to arrive Friday or Saturday, at which point repairs will begin, but did not provide a timeline for when the elevator will be fixed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe recognize the disruption this has caused, particularly for residents on higher floors and those with mobility challenges. On-site staff are available to assist residents as needed during this time,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Wasmund said he has not seen much staff support and believes the response falls short.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re trying to sugar coat it for us, trying to keep us at bay, like, ‘Oh it\u2019s going to be okay.’ This is not okay. This is horrible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The City of St. Petersburg says residents who have an emergency and cannot leave their apartments should call 911. For ongoing concerns, they can also contact code enforcement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Residents at The Portland say a broken elevator has left some unable to leave their apartments, raising concerns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-198376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}