The audit, released Thursday, found that dozens of SROs receiving city funding for low-income housing have non-working elevators, sometimes leaving seniors and residents with mobility issues stranded in their apartments for days. Between 2018 and 2023, San Francisco's 311 non-emergency line received approximately 600 complaints about non-working elevators, 45 percent of which were related to SROs.

Of the 225 SROs in the city that have an elevator, 34 percent received at least one notice of violation for malfunctioning elevators from the Department of Building Inspection between 2018 and April 2024, with the majority of violations occurring in city-funded SROs.

The audit began in 2023 after the Board of Supervisors allocated $10 million to modernize elevators in city-funded SROs. Its role is to determine how best to apply that funding.

But the report makes clear that the ultimate authority over elevator safety lies with the state. While the Department of Building Inspection enforces building codes, permitting, upkeep, maintenance, and safety issues for elevators fall under the California Occupational Safety and Health Agency, part of the state Department of Industrial Relations. Once the city files a report about an elevator with the state, its responsibility ends—and reports can go unaddressed for years.

The extreme delays in state safety inspections mean that nearly 8,000 elevators across San Francisco—over 200 of which are in SROs—currently do not have up-to-date permits.

During the audit, the controller's office visited 20 elevators in SROs. All had expired permits, and most had design or installation flaws that made them dangerous for seniors and people with disabilities, including manual and narrow doors, gaps between the elevator car and the floor, and no emergency button to call for help if the elevator gets stuck.

The city also does not keep an accurate record of the more than 500 SROs across San Francisco and the over 300 elevators within them.

Broken elevators have plagued SROs for years. Nearly 94 percent of the city's SROs were built before 1930, and over a quarter of the elevators in SROs were installed before the Americans with Disabilities Act passed in 1990. Older elevators are costly to maintain because they require antique parts that can be hard to find and difficult to install. Some SRO elevators, the audit notes, "are so antiquated that repair companies may hesitate or decline to work on them."

Of 27 SRO owners surveyed, 11 said they had to repair their elevators at least 10 times in 2023 alone. One building manager quoted in the audit said repairing a single worn elevator cost nearly $40,000, and that fully modernizing an elevator cost between $100,000 and $300,000—though the upgrade usually pays for itself within four to seven years through lower repair costs.

To fix the problem, the audit concludes that legislative change may be necessary. Oakland and Berkeley have adopted laws requiring landlords to maintain elevators and providing tenant protections, such as mandating that landlords find or reimburse tenants for alternative housing if an outage lasts longer than 24 hours. Los Angeles has eliminated the state's role altogether; under a special state provision, it has independent authority to inspect its own elevators and issue permits.

The controller's office recommends that the city's Office of Disability work with the Board of Supervisors to amend city law similar to Berkeley's or Oakland's. In the meantime, it recommends that the Department of Building Inspection, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Disability Assistance, the Mayor's Office of Housing, and the Planning Department develop a shared, comprehensive list of all SRO elevators and information about qualified technicians.

The audit follows reporting in August that found more than one-third of the 2,800 buildings in San Francisco with only one reported elevator had not recorded a state inspection in more than three years, despite a state law requiring most elevators to be inspected annually. At the time, a spokesperson for the state Department of Industrial Relations acknowledged frequent delays and said the department prioritizes elevators with permits that have been expired the longest.