After years of complaints about the reliability of the two elevators in Sopron House, UBC Housing has announced plans to fully modernize both elevators in the student family housing building in Acadia Park.
In an email sent to residents Sept. 4, UBC Housing said the project would “fully modernize both elevators” and “significantly improve the reliability and overall performance of the elevators in Sopron House for many years to come.”
Modernization of Elevator 1 is scheduled to begin Oct. 12, followed by Elevator 2 on Nov. 23. The project is expected to be completed by mid-January, although UBC has not provided an exact completion date.
The announcement comes as residents say elevator problems have become a regular occurrence in the building.
Rhiannon Owen and her husband, George Berry, have lived in Sopron House for more than four years. They said they have experienced elevator problems roughly every two to three weeks, including being trapped inside for several minutes to as long as an hour.
The couple also reported seeing other residents become stuck, having one or both elevators completely out of service, buttons failing to light up or work, elevators stopping at incorrect floors and the elevators “jolting” when arriving at a floor.
For Owen, an unreliable elevator is more than an inconvenience.
She has juvenile idiopathic arthritis, a condition that causes joint pain, swelling and stiffness, which in turn, affects her mobility. Because of her condition, she requested accessible housing through UBC’s Centre for Accessibility. The couple was placed on the second floor of Sopron House and told “not to worry” because the building had elevators.
But the elevator outages have left the couple worried.
Berry said the couple has repeatedly encountered situations where Owen begins experiencing a flareup while they are out and they return home so she can rest, only to discover that the elevator is out of service.
“Coming back to the lift, and seeing it out of order, without prior knowledge, is the classic,” he said. “So we have to instead take the stairs, which is not ideal.”
Owen said taking the stairs during a flare-up can significantly increase her pain.
When asked what occurs afterward, Owen and Berry both described it as an “immediate collapse.” Owen said she would stay home for the rest of the day to rest, while Berry would take care of necessary tasks.
Following UBC’s modernization announcement, fellow resident Neger Zaghi said, “It would be amazing to have peace of mind that the elevator won’t get stuck.”
Zaghi said this sentiment stems from the multiple times she and her 10-monthold baby were stuck in the elevator.
Riley Plunkett, another resident who reported being stuck in the elevator, said he wished UBC ’s announcement had acknowledged the broader impact of the outages.
“It would’ve been nice to get an acknowledgment that the elevators not working consistently meant that people with strollers and mobility aids—of which there are many on floors 2-4—were harmed,” he said.
UBC Student Housing and Community Services (SHCS) was asked about the building’s history of elevator issues and accessibility concerns.
Shannon Dunn, a member of SHCS’s senior leadership team, pointed to the upcoming modernization project and said, “We expect this project to considerably improve elevator operability and reliability.”
She added that during an elevator outage, “UBC notifies all residents in the building with registered mobility issues and offers immediate support, including temporary accommodation elsewhere on campus if appropriate.”
For Owen, however, the modernization is only one part of making housing accessible.
“Accessibility is not a one-time thing that you can check off,” she said.
“It’s something UBC has to practice, so I would like them to change this culture where it’s like ‘we have an elevator; this building is accessible’, to more practicing the culture of accessibility — talking to specific individuals that they know have gained housing through the Centre for Accessibility to just make sure that it is truly accessible because right now I don’t think that’s the case”
With the elevator’s modernization scheduled to begin next month, residents will now wait to see whether the upgrades deliver the reliability UBC intends to provide.
EMBER THOME IS AN UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT MAJORING IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND MINORING IN JOURNALISM. IN HER SPARE TIME, EMBER CAN BE FOUND READING A COMIC BOOK WITH HER CAT ARLO SITTING COZILY IN HER LAP.