By Cindy J. Roth
He climbs the 17 steps in his apartment building several times a day. A heart attack, recent stroke and kidney failure make it all that much more difficult to face what seem to him like Mount Everest. Finkelstein tries to mask his pain with an emotionless face, but the soft grunts and grasps for breath show the exhaustion he must feel as he makes his way up the stairs.
Finkelstein is one of about a two dozen older adults living in Bellmore Gardens, an affordable senior living complex on Bellmore Avenue, which the Town of Hempstead runs. Making his home in a second-floor, one-bedroom apartment for the past 12 years, Finkelstein and many others have come to think of the apartment complex as a mini-community. They watch out for one another and know the intimate details of one another's lives.
This community, though, is struggling. Many of the second-floor residents in Bellmore Gardens building one have lost the agility to make it up and down the building's flight of stairs. Without an elevator, residents say it is not only dangerous for them to live on the second floor, it could become deadly.
"Some people can't get up or down [the stairs] and don't leave their apartments," said Finkelstein. "It's unbelievable what they're really doing to us. If you have faculties, you should be able to go down stairs and enjoy the sun. We'll die going up and down the stairs. We're treated like second-class citizens."
Building one's second-floor residents believe an elevator or a ramp should be installed at the complex. Their many complaints and lobbying efforts to the Town of Hempstead about the situation continue to go with a viable solution. Residents said that, when they complain, they are told they can be moved downstairs. But with no available rooms on the Bellmore facility's first floor, residents would be required to move to one of the 13 other housing complexes in Nassau County, an unpalatable option for senior citizens who have made their homes in Bellmore for so long.
"This is like a community here," said Finkelstein. "We take care of each other. They say they can move you down stairs or to other areas, but we're already settled up here. There has to be something that can be done."
Ronnie Lawrence, executive director of the Town of Hempstead Housing Authority, said potential residents are asked before being placed in a second-story apartment whether they can handle the stairs. Because seniors want to be placed in certain areas, said Lawrence, they say they have no problems climbing stairs, which later on leads to bigger problems once residents become settled.
"We are understanding," said Lawrence. "We will move people downstairs. Most of the time, they don't want to move."
Lawrence said building an elevator or ramp at the Bellmore site is out of the question. No Town of Hempstead senior living facilities is equipped with elevators, and a ramp would be too steep to benefit the building. Lawrence also said she "does not think [the building] creates any kind of unsafe situation," and was quick to point out that, in a fire, residents would not able to use an elevator anyway.
Bellmore Gardens resident Catherine Giannini said the situation has become tiresome and relatively hopeless, having gotten the runaround from several politicos. As more seniors are living longer, mobility across the board is going to become an ongoing problem, a problem that should be addressed sooner than later, said Giannini.
"You can live in dignity with a small elevator," said Giannini, 72, who has resided on the building's second floor for the past eight years. "When my husband had a heart attack, [EMS workers] had to tie him to a chair to take him downstairs [because the stairwell is too winding and narrow to allow for a stretcher]. It's sad."
Giannini said when residents have complained about the need for an elevator, they have been told that, if they cannot live in the complex, they should consider moving into a nursing home.
Dominick DeMarco, 77, who has lived in Bellmore Gardens for two years, said a ramp would be the answer to everything, including probably the town's budgetary restraints. If nothing else, residents said installing a dumbwaiter to place groceries and laundry on, instead of having to carry the items upstairs, would make the situation more tolerable.
Lawrence said town officials are well aware of residents' complaints and are trying to find living arrangements that prove both sides to be winners. For now, Lawrence said, if the residents are unwilling to move to a downstairs apartment, even if it means leaving Bellmore, there is little that the town can do.
