Elevators installed in aging residential buildings are making life easier for elderly people
It wasn’t long ago that Li Baozhen, 93, was feeling trapped in her own home. Living on the sixth floor of an apartment building in Shanghai’s downtown Hongkou district, and with no elevator to use, she was isolated from the world around her for decades.
But that all changed in February when an elevator was installed in her building, which was built nearly half a century ago.
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Builders work to install an elevator at an old residential building in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Zhang Zhi / For China Daily |
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Left: Zhang Jianxin (second left) from Jia Jia Le, a social service agency, joins residents in testing a newly installed elevator in Shanghai. Provided to China Daily; right: An exterior view of elevators installed at the residential building. He Qi / China Daily |
It means Li now no longer needs climb up and down flights of stairs, which has become an arduous task in the past decade. She could only manage one trip downstairs a day, with the use of a cane for support.
“I feel free now because I can go outside as long and as often as I want,” Li says.
She is not alone in her relief. Statistics show Shanghai has more than 220,000 multistory residential buildings not serviced by elevators.
“About 70 percent of residents in those buildings are middle-aged or elderly people, for whom climbing up and down the stairs is a physical torture,” says Zhang Jianxin, a liaison officers at Jia Jia Le, the city’s first social service agency aimed at providing professional help to people who need elevators in their buildings.
To free residents – especially elderly people – of old multistory residences from having to take the stairs, installing elevators has become a key task for the governments in many Chinese cities, particularly those with aging populations.
Due to the underdeveloped economic environment when they were constructed, older apartment buildings with six or seven floors were not equipped with elevators. Stairs were the only access between floors, each of which usually had two or three apartments ranging in size from 25 to 60 square meters.
“Although they are not as decorative as the high-rise commercial residential buildings built during the 21st century, old buildings are still the best choice for the elderly due to their low property management fee – less than 10 yuan ($1.73; 1.50 euros; ￡1.32) a month – and their convenient locations, with good access to markets, shops and public transportation,” Zhang says.
In addition, due to rapid economic development today, soaring housing prices have deterred many of them from moving into a relatively new apartment.
As a result, elderly people account for 70 percent of the residents in those 220,000 multistory apartment buildings without elevators across Shanghai, according to Zhang.
A 70-year-old woman surnamed Wang says her physical condition is now too weak, so she struggles to climb to her home on the sixth floor. As she can’t afford to move to a building with an elevator, she sometimes has to be carried by others to go downstairs. “We’re eager to us a newly built elevator,” she says.
Noticing the difficulties faced by people in this situation, in 2009, Beijing became the first in the country to address the problem.
According to statistics from the capital’s Bureau of Quality Supervision, 150,000 old six-story buildings currently require elevators and match the conditions needed for installation.
The city government plans to start more than 400 installation projects and to finish at least 200 this year. It has also set the goal of adding more than 1,000 elevators at multistory buildings by 2020.
Many cities such as Tianjin, Chongqing and Wuhan in Hubei province have also devised policies and guidelines to support elevator installation projects at old buildings.
Shanghai issued guidelines for installing elevators in old multistory residential buildings in 2011. They outlined items such as the conditions for installation, distribution of costs and fire safety.
However, despite government support, the action has not gone as smoothly as expected.
It took nearly four years for the first elevator to be installed at an old Shanghai residential building. The seven-story No 7 building in the Nujiangyuan community, in Putuo district, was the first project, in 2015.
Since then, obstacles have continued to prove real and hard to overcome.
For example, under the policy, a proposal for installing an elevator needs to be agreed on by 90 percent of residents in the building and two-thirds of the residents in the neighborhood. If 10 percent of residents are against the proposal, it will be vetoed.
Such a consensus can be hard to get. Many first-floor residents do not agree with adding an elevator because it might block sunlight and ventilation, and create noise.
Some are also concerned about house prices, says Shi Jiankang, vice-president of the Kunming Elevator Association in Yunnan province. “Before adding elevators, the first- and second-floor apartments in a building are more expensive than the fifth and sixth floor, as residents do not need to climb up stairs. But after the construction, the situation will be reversed,” Shi says.
Cost sharing is another major issue. Under the policy, the Shanghai government will provide up to 240,000 yuan ($) to install each elevator, which means the residents must cover the remainder of the cost, usually 260,000 to 460,000 yuan.
It took a year and almost 30 meetings attended by city officials and resident representatives to strike a consensus among all 12 households in the Nujiangyuan No 7 building.
Eventually, it was agreed that residents on the higher floors paid more than those living on the lower ones, while residents on the first floor need not pay at all.
The agreement has become a reference for future projects.
In addition to interpersonal and economic obstacles, low government efficiency has also caused trouble.
According to Gong Jianhao, who suggested installing an elevator at a building on Wenshui East Road in Hongkou district in 2013, he spent three years in talks with different government departments to get the project off the ground.
“We only spent a few months on solving the problems with residents, but it took years negotiating with the government,” he says. “I even had to visit the city’s meteorological administration and the geology bureau to get permission.”
The elevator was finally installed in February.
Recognizing the administrative barriers, and wanting to build a convenient city for the elderly, the Shanghai government reduced the number of official stamps needed for approval from 46 to 15 in 2016. It also set up social services agency Jia Jia Le to help residents.
“We’re dedicated to providing guidelines and instructions, and to helping residents in need on related issues, such as introducing the elevator companies, or communicating with related bureaus, contractors, neighborhood committees and neighbors,” Zhang says.
Since the agency was launched in March, it has helped five apartment buildings in Hongkou get elevators installed. Three more are under construction and 19 are in the planning stage.
Other districts across Shanghai have launched similar pilot projects over the past two years.
Data from the city government indicates that 12 elevators projects had been completed at multistory residential buildings as of May, with 43 more in the works.
For Zhang, the job of being a liaison for such projects has been a rewarding one. There have been headaches, but also many heartwarming moments, she says.
“Most residents are really understanding and supportive, even those who live on the first floor,” she says.
She recalled helping a 60-year-old woman called Ye Niangen during one project. Despite living on the first floor, Ye agreed to the project straight away because, as a younger woman, she had regularly visited her aging mother in a building without elevators.
Zhang recalls Ye saying, “I know the pain.”
Yu Ruyue contributed to this story.
Contact the writer at [email protected]
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Left: A billboard shows the procedure for getting the consent needed to install an elevator in an old residential building in Shanghai’s Hongkou district. Right: Builders install an elevator at an apartment block in Chengdu, Sichuan province. |
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A foreign visitor tries a wheelchair stair lift at a community in Jiaxing, Zhejiang province, in April. The stair lift system, which has been introduced in some residential communities, is a cheeper alternative to an elevator. |
(China Daily European Weekly 10/26/2018 page20)