Stranded at home by a broken elevator. NYC lift complaints keep rising.

Curtis Cost has been stuck inside his fourth-floor apartment for about a month, and he’s still not sure when he’ll be able to leave.

Cost, 67, uses a motorized wheelchair to move around and depends on the elevator in his apartment building on Perry Avenue in the Norwood section of the Bronx. But the elevator is broken, leaving him stranded this holiday season.

“ I'm confined like a prisoner, and the scariest thing is I don’t know when this is going to end,” Cost said. “I’m going to be stuck here for Christmas. I can’t even do any family gatherings.”

He said previous outages have also lasted weeks and the repairs don’t last long. More New Yorkers may be in a similar bind.

A Gothamist analysis finds residents in the five boroughs have made nearly 22,000 elevator-related complaints to the city’s 311 system so far this year — up from around 17,000 in 2021.

And the Bronx, where Cost lives, has by far the highest number of reported problems. The borough accounts for around 42% of all elevator-related complaints, and 13 of the 15 buildings with the most reports over the past three years.

For many people, a busted lift can be an annoyance. But for Cost and others with disabilities, elevators are essential.

“It's a huge problem,” said Center for Independence of the Disabled New York Executive Director Sharon McLennon Wier. “I wish I could say I have an easy fix, [but] there isn't a quick remedy.”

McLennon Wier said most of the calls the organization gets are about housing problems, and often about elevators specifically.

She said landlords have a responsibility to maintain equipment so elevators don’t break down. And she said owners should repair them immediately if they do.

“If you are  paying rent, you are paying for maintenance essentially,” McLennon Wier said.

Department of Buildings data shows that while elevator complaints have soared by thousands since the 2021 fiscal year, the number of addresses where complaints have been made actually decreased citywide in the 2025 fiscal year, which ended in June.

But in the Bronx, the number of buildings subject to at least one complaint rose by about 500 during that span.

City records show the elevator is a chronic problem at the Perry Avenue building where Cost lives. Earlier this month, a city building inspector issued a violation for the broken lift — the fifth time the Department of Buildings has penalized the landlord for elevator outages at the 50-unit complex this year alone.

A spokesperson for Cost’s landlord, Ved Parkash, and his company, Parkash Management, declined to be quoted by name but said in a written statement that the repair job is taking longer than expected and that mechanics hired to fix the elevator encountered unexpected problems.

Natasha Kersey, a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said Parkash’s company is waiting for a new part to ensure the elevator doesn’t move until the door is fully closed.

“We’re deeply sorry for the disruption residents are experiencing, especially during the holiday season for many New Yorkers, and we recognize the real hardship this creates for tenants when an elevator is out of service,” Kersey said in a statement.

Parkash was ranked number one on the public advocate’s annual list of worst landlords in 2015, and problems continue to mount at buildings owned by his companies — including fires and slow renovations that displace tenants.

But even for the most diligent property owners, elevator repairs can be a financial and logistical challenge, said Brendan Mitchell, real estate director at the Bronx-based University Neighborhood Housing Program.

Mitchell’s organization, known as UNHP, runs over two dozen apartment buildings in the Bronx, with rents capped for low- and middle-income tenants. He said replacing an elevator can run up to $300,000, and repair companies often spend over a week locating a necessary part.

For some owners, he said, “the cost of the repair can be prohibitive.”

Elevators break down in all kinds of buildings, including luxury high-rises housing affluent tenants in Lower Manhattan and even on Billionaires’ Row in Midtown.

But outages in older, rent-stabilized apartment buildings in the Bronx touch on a larger debate around housing policy, Mitchell said.

Landlord lobbyists and housing groups have called on the city to establish a multi-billion-dollar bailout fund for owners in financial distress, allowing them to make loan payments and fund repairs. They say current laws prevent them from raising rent to a level that will match their expenses.

But UNHP has highlighted how landlords often failed to invest in their Bronx properties and instead used loans to acquire other buildings.

Mitchell said the city and state should work to lower expenses for owners of rent-stabilized housing, like property taxes and liability insurance, to free up more money for maintenance and repairs.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has focused on curbing those costs to counter a demand for higher rents. And he has vowed to seize or acquire properties from owners who can’t keep up with routine maintenance and repairs.

Those broader policy implications matter little to Cost at the moment. He just wants to go out to see Christmas lights in the neighborhood, meet with friends for an annual holiday dinner and ride his motorized wheelchair at nearby Williamsbridge Oval.

He said he requested a reasonable accommodation from the landlord to move into a first-floor unit, but he said Parkash has so far refused.

Parkash Management’s spokesperson said there are no apartments available on the first floor.

In the meantime, Cost said he has spent his time reading, watching television and trying to do light exercises.

“It gets very, very depressing,” he said. “ I’m just using my imagination to keep my sanity.”