Both elevators often broken at high-rise condo building on Chicago's Southwest Side

An elderly woman has essentially abandoned her home of three decades because of constantly broken elevators at her high-rise condo building on the Southwest Side of Chicago.

A trip up to her condo on the 14th floor at the Ford City Condo Association isn't exactly smooth; the ceiling is missing and there's a concerning clickety clackety noise.

Kazia Ptak, 88, called her 14th floor condo home for some three decades before the building started going downhill.

"She loved the apartment," said her daughter, Gosia Steczek.

In 2018, tenants complained about a condo-owned road filled with potholes. That road is still in disrepair, the building's front door is broken, as is the glass that welcomes people to the lobby.

Water doesn't always flow through the faucets.

But if you live on the 14th floor, no working elevators is a dealbreaker.

Steczek said one of the two elevators has been broken for years. The other one is often down for days, weeks, or even longer.

"The longest it's been down for about six or seven months," said Resident Renee Hatton.

Hatton said, even when the one working elevator can take people up and down, it takes a bit of coaxing.

"I went to the elevator and I stood there for about five minutes pressing the up and down button. So I kind of like nosed it a little bit, kind of bumped it a little bit, and it made some noise, and then I looked up, and I'm like, 'Oh my God, here it come.' It was magical," she said.

Sometimes, there is no magic wand to get the elevator, and residents are forced to walk up or down more than a dozen stories in an often sweltering hot, graffiti-filled staircase.

"It's not fair to walk up and down 13 flights of stairs going to work, and have to go to work, come from work, and then when you come up from work, you already, I did your job for the day, then you got to do another job," Hatton said.

In the case of the disabled or seniors, like Ptak, they often can't walk and are forced to use a magic number: 911. Firefighters are regularly called to get residents up or down.

"I called the fire department, they came in, they took her down, and I went and thanked the guy. I'm like, thank you very much for bringing her down," Steczek said.

That's not all firefighters have done at the building.

According to records of calls for service, firefighters have had to rescue someone from a stalled elevator at least 17 times since 2024.

Some of the incident reports included action taken like "rescue, remove from harm," "provide patient care," and "extricate, disentangle."

The city of Chicago is trying to help through its Troubled Buildings Initiative.

But even the city's ability to help at Ford City Condos is limited, officials said, because of the old age of the elevators, years of deferred maintenance, delays in getting parts, and difficulty finding a repair company because of the association's past non-payment.

"It's very disruptive. It's like, okay, where am I going to go after this? And I know this is not normal, because people don't usually live in a 150-unit building with no, with two broken elevators," Hatton said.

There is finally hope for the residents. A developer is in the process of buying the complex, and has promised to fix the elevators, water issues, leaks, and other deferred repairs.

Current residents can stay with a promise they can pay "at or below market rent," but new owners could mean things might finally be looking up for the Ford City Condos.