Elderly and disabled renters at two separate Memphis apartment towers spent days trapped in their units this week after elevators broke down, forcing some to either stay put or attempt flights of stairs they physically could not manage. At Serenity Towers, the city of Memphis stepped in to pay an elevator repair company more than $11,000 in November 2024.
The two apartment complexes had elevator disruptions in Memphis this week, inconveniencing and even trapping senior renters for hours, according to FOX13 Memphis. At Serenity Towers, some residents had been trapped in their rooms for longer than a week before the city's November 2024 intervention. Once those repairs were finished, elderly and disabled renters were no longer trapped in their rooms at the property.
A Tower With a Troubled History
Serenity Towers has two buildings, each ten stories tall, according to the same FOX13 Memphis report, though a separate report from Action News 5 put the property's population at about 200 residents in connection with a possible relocation effort — the two accounts differ on the building's exact population figures. Elevator trouble is not new for the complex. In a separate report, the station noted renters have had to deal with broken elevators, inconsistent heating and unreliable hot water in recent years, and that some renters were trapped for ten days in their homes because they couldn't navigate up and down ten flights of stairs.
The last time HUD cut funding to a low-income housing complex in Memphis was back in 2023 with Peppertree Apartments in Whitehaven, the station's reporting noted, offering context for how seriously federal housing regulators can treat sustained maintenance failures.
Memphis Towers Residents Describe Similar Ordeal
Across town, residents of Memphis Towers, a high-rise for fixed-income seniors, say they have been stuck without a reliably working elevator, according to WREG. Olive McBee, who lives on the fifth floor and uses a wheelchair, told the station, “There's only been one working for the past three months,” and said that elevator had also become stuck upstairs at times. Millennia Housing said it was working to engage a vendor to repair the inoperable elevator while the second elevator remained functioning, the station reported.
Not Just a Memphis Problem
Senior housing complaints over elevator reliability have surfaced well beyond Memphis. Complaints in New York City's low-income housing are up by nearly 33% over the past five years, the San Francisco Standard reported, and the San Francisco Fire Department responded to 1,277 calls about stalled elevators last year compared with 1,764 this year, according to the same San Francisco Standard report.
In Muskogee, Oklahoma, an elevator outage lasting four days made it difficult for some people, especially seniors, to leave their apartments at the Manhattan Apartments, according to KJRH, which reported that property manager Garrison Companies said the elevators were expected to be repaired by Oct. 13 and that assistance was available for residents who needed help using the stairs.
Serenity Towers' 2024 Elevator Repairs
In November 2024, the city of Memphis paid more than $11,000 for elevator repairs at Serenity Towers.
