Imagine living on the tenth floor of an apartment building, having a major health issue, and no reliable elevator service. That's exactly what Michael Shaver and Cindy Frantz have to deal with at the LBJ Apartments on Humboldt Avenue.     

"I have congestive heart failure. I should not be walking those stairs," Shaver said. "I have to walk down ten flights of stairs to get down. I have to walk ten flights of stairs to get back up. I mean you can actually get short of breath and fall down the stairs."

"I needed an ambulance two weeks ago. How would they get me, as a larger person, down these stairs? Or even up to me if I needed that ambulance today?” Frantz said.

"It's unfair that we have to live like this with no elevators," said Carmella Dorsey.

Dorsey heads the tenant council at the LBJ Apartments. She's say the elevators have been broken for months, some say years.    

"The problem here now today is the elevators are not working," Dorsey said. "As you can see, this one is out with a paper on it, that one is stuck up on eight. We have seniors and people who live up on the 10th floor that can't get down here to the first floor. Those that are coming down are walking down with canes, walkers, and they have to stay down here until someone else can help them get back upstairs."

"It's a horrible situation when you live on an upper floor, and you're elderly or ill, or both," said BMHA Executive Director Gillian Brown.

Brown says the problem is age. The elevators in the building built in the 70's are simply at the end of their life span. He says the plan is to replace both the elevators.    

"For the last couple of years, replacement of both of those elevators has been included in the BMHA's capital plan. It is now being designed, so the job is in the design phase. They will be done in 2019, there will be new elevators in that building," said Brown.

Until then Brown says he has an elevator company and engineers on call 24-hours a day and crews are currently working to get both elevators up and running. Meantime Shaver says residents are ones who have to pay the price.    

"We pay our rent just like anybody else, it's like they don't care," said Shaver.