A broken elevator at the Horseshoe Pond Place senior apartments has left at least 10 residents unable to exit the building on their own for the last two weeks.

The elevator is scheduled for repair this weekend, according to Ryan Stewart, vice president at Stewart Property Management, which owns the affordable, 55-plus living complex.

“We told people throughout this that we are doing everything we absolutely could, and we did,” Stewart said.

“There are some there that have had a hardship with this,” he continued. “It’s definitely not something that we want to prolong and we’re doing everything we can to get it going as soon as we can.”

There are 77 units split between two connected buildings at the complex. Thirty-eight of them, those on the upper three floors of the former Page Belting building, are currently without a working elevator. Stewart estimated that there are “at least 10” who typically rely on that elevator.

Those needing to leave the building, such as for a medical appointment, are left to call the Concord Fire Department for help.

Concord Fire has been called to the building six times this week to assist three different residents, according to Deputy Chief of Operations Mark Hebert. The residents are carried up and down the stairs.

Hebert said the department was in contact with property management and praised their response.

“They are taking this seriously,” he said.

He noted that residents had been encouraged to reschedule non-emergency appointments to take some strain off the emergency response.

However, he emphasized, “If they call 911, we’re going there.”

During an elevator outage, housing providers are required by the federal Fair Housing Act to ensure all residents have an “equal opportunity to use and enjoy a dwelling.”

“While there’s no set deadline for repairing an elevator, repairs must be done within a reasonable time,” said James Ziegra, senior staff attorney at the Disability Rights Center of New Hampshire, in a written statement. “If an elevator is out for a while, landlords must assist their tenants with daily tasks like grocery shopping and trash removal. For longer outages, the landlord may even need to offer temporary housing… ignoring these responsibilities could lead to FHA violations.”

Residents have been offered assistance with groceries and trash collection, Stewart said, though the availability of that help had been shared by word of mouth. Residents would receive a communication by Friday letting them know how to request support. They have not been offered an alternative place to stay, and there are no ground-floor residences in that building, according to Stewart.

According to Stewart, the elevator repair company was contacted as soon as the mechanical issue started: the motor operating the doors had failed. The repair company had come out and attempted a fix within two days, but ultimately a new part had to be ordered, resulting in the delay.

“We first thought it was going to be a relatively quick fix,” Stewart said. “When these sort of things happen, unfortunately, sometimes they’re longer fixes than anybody would like.”

The part has since arrived, and work was scheduled to begin Friday, he said. He noted that this elevator is regularly inspected.

“As things escalated, we had to keep delaying things, and that frustrates people, and I get it,” Stewart said. “I think there’s a lot of distrust out there when people think that a landlord just doesn’t want to fix something. In this scenario, it’s in everybody’s best interest, especially ours, to make sure it’s running as soon as possible.”

Catherine McLaughlin can be reached at cmclaughlin@cmonitor.com or 603-369-3322. You can subscribe to her Concord newsletter The City Beat at concordmonitor.com.