Editor's note
In recent years, as the renovation of old communities in cities and towns has been carried out in an all-round way, the installation of elevators has become a highly demanded renovation project. The relatively slow installation process and frequent neighborhood disputes correspond to the high demand.
Installing an elevator is a good thing, but why has it become a problem?
How to balance the interests of residents on different floors?
Can old buildings that cannot be installed with elevators solve the travel problems of the elderly?
For us who are entering an aging society, the test may have just begun.
After 8 months of waiting, in June 2021, 5 of the 12 unit buildings in the community where Zhang Jian (a pseudonym) is located were installed with elevators.
Starting in November, the community again mobilized the remaining unit buildings to also install elevators.
This is a community built in 1999 in Taiyuan, Shanxi. All units are six or seven storeys high.
Because it is a family compound built by the unit for employees, the quality of the housing is good, and the property services can keep up. Zhang Jian feels that life is very comfortable.
"The only downside is that there is no elevator. I think, I will be older in the future, can I still climb the stairs?" He is 60 years old this year and lives on the 4th floor. He and his wife saw a lot of elevator rooms in the past two years.
In 2020, Taiyuan began to renovate the old community. This community successfully applied for elevator installation. Zhang Jian felt that there would be no need to change houses, saving money and trouble, and actively helped Zhang Luo with the owners to sign and agree.
He was originally worried that the owners of the first and second floors had concerns, especially the two owners on the first floor did not occupy themselves. He did not expect that they would directly agree to the installation. .
Zhang Jian’s unit was successfully approved by all residents.
After all adjacent units signed and approved by the owners, one household on the first floor repented halfway and prevented the construction team from continuing to work.
1 for the elevator to the court
The laid foundation was exposed at the door of the unit, and a lawsuit started between the neighborhoods.
The concerns of users on the first floor are obvious.
The lower floors cannot enjoy the convenience brought by the elevator, but there are problems such as blocked lighting and elevator noise.
If you consider the issue of later sales, the value of the first and second floors is higher when there is no elevator. With the elevator, not only will it lose its advantages, it may also cause the value of the house to depreciate.
In this regard, Zhang Jian’s unit uniformly stipulates that the installation costs of the first and second floors do not need to be paid by the residents, and the other floors are shared equally.
If you want to use the elevator on the second floor, you only need to pay 5,000 yuan for the initial installation fee.
However, the repentant owners hope that the high-level owners can give themselves a certain amount of compensation. The two sides failed to reach a reunification, and the project was delayed.
According to Zhang Xueshu, the manager in charge of elevator construction, the installation of elevators involves a series of preliminary works, such as designing, laying foundations, purchasing materials, etc., and national elevator subsidies cannot be issued until the project is accepted, so the engineering team paid a portion of the funds in advance. Later, this part of the funds raised by the residents was also used, and it was no longer refundable.
This building "frozen" here.
Such problems are not unresolved precedents.
Previously, the media reported a very similar case.
A community built in 2004 in Wenjiang District, Chengdu, Sichuan, where the residents of 2 buildings and 2 units are mostly elderly people.
After the country promulgated the policy of installing elevators in old community courtyards, through voting, all 12 owners agreed to install elevators.
In May 2020, the elevator company began to enter the site for construction, but was blocked by two residents on the first floor.
Since then, the four high-level owners brought a lawsuit against the first-floor residents to the court.
This lawsuit went through the first instance and the second instance.
In September 2020, the People's Court of Wenjiang District of Chengdu issued a judgment of first instance that residents on the first floor must stop obstructing and obstructing the installation and construction of elevators.
The original verdict was upheld in the second instance.
The reporter looked at the China Judgment Documents website and found that in recent years, there have been more disputes over neighboring rights caused by the installation of elevators. The judgments are often the same as in this case. The applicable law has undergone a transformation from the property law to the civil code.
According to the provisions of the Property Law, the reconstruction and reconstruction of buildings and their ancillary facilities shall be approved by the owners whose exclusive part accounts for more than two-thirds of the total area of the building and more than two-thirds of the total number of owners.
The Civil Code is changed to reduce the voting rights to "two three-quarters", that is, the owners who participate in the exclusive part of the voting area of more than three-quarters and more than three-quarters of the voting number of the owners can implement the elevator. Renovation project.
The reporter interviewed a number of community workers, and they all said that going to court is not a good recipe.
The installation of elevators is not a mandatory requirement for the renovation of old communities, and it is mainly based on residents' negotiation.
Liu Lin (pseudonym), a staff member of a street in Beijing, said: “The renovation of the old community itself is a civil project. If the installation is forced, it will cause antagonism among residents, and the subsequent elevator maintenance work may be more troublesome.”
2 "Bottom-up" demand
Since the reform and opening up, my country has experienced the largest and fastest urbanization process in the history of the world. The urbanization rate of the permanent population has increased from 10.6% in the early days of the founding of New China to 63.89% in 2020.
Therefore, urban renewal is also in progress.
After the renovation of shanty towns was completed, most of the low-rise buildings built around the 1990s entered a stage of improvement, and the renovation of old communities was put on the agenda.
Tian Xinli, assistant to the director of the Tsinghua Tongheng Urban Renewal Design Institute, has participated in many urban renewal projects. She introduced that the transformation of old communities is tailored to local conditions, and each community makes a list of what it needs according to its own characteristics.
Among them, the most difficult thing she finds to implement is to install elevators. The complexity is not the physical construction of the elevators, but the redistribution of the vested interests of each household. Many".
Taking Beijing as an example, based on previous media reports, in 2019, Beijing requires all districts to conduct a thorough investigation.
The relevant person in charge of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Housing and Urban-rural Development once introduced that according to the report, there are more than 100,000 unit doors in the city that meet the requirements for installation, involving more than 2 million residents.
The actual installation situation is that in 2019, 693 elevators will be newly started and 555 will be completed; in 2020, 476 will be newly started and 636 will be completed.
According to the relevant person in charge of a provincial housing construction department, compared with the previous shantytown reconstruction and demolition work, one of the bright spots of the old community reconstruction is to insist on the residents' willingness.
This kind of “bottom-up” demand requires the consent of residents, the community submits an application, and the relevant departments approve it before being included in the scope of reconstruction.
To some extent, this puts forward high requirements on the level of self-government of residents, and it also tests community workers: how to obtain the greatest common divisor in the face of the different demands of ordinary people.
How to coordinate the interests of different users, Zhang Xiaona, a senior lawyer at Beijing Pushengda Law Firm, suggests adopting a “layer-by-layer apportionment” plan, that is, installing elevators to remove the subsidy part, and the remaining part is not shared by the residents on the first floor. It varies according to the height of the floor. For example, for each additional floor, an additional portion will be allocated.
"You can also use the'shared elevator' scheme. Simple understanding is that the installation is free and pay-per-use. During the initial installation, all residents do not need to share the cost. The elevator company or the government will fund the construction. However, you must swipe the card to open the elevator every time A certain fee is charged for swiping the card, and the fee varies according to different floors." Zhang Xiaona said.
During the construction process, Zhang Xueshu felt that technological advancement and reasonable installation plans also helped to increase the possibility of low-rise residents agreeing to install elevators.
"The elevator of Zhang Jian's unit can be installed smoothly. Part of the reason is that the elevator faces the door of the unit instead of the balcony of the residents. The transparent box also makes the low-rise lighting almost unaffected." He believes that a better way to protect the rights and interests of everyone should be developed. The installation plan shall be explained in detail to the residents, and supervision and review shall be strengthened during the installation process.
3 No longer a problem for a small group of people
For other old communities, "installing elevators" need not be discussed because the hardware conditions are not up to standard.
Zhang Jian's father is in his 90s this year. The community he lives in was built in the 1980s with a prefabricated brick-concrete structure. Because of its ease of assembly and low cost, this structure was used in large numbers in urban residential houses.
Until around 2000, regulations were issued in many places to prohibit reuse in buildings.
This structure cannot withstand the vibration caused by the installation of an elevator.
In addition to the building structure, Liu Lin introduced that some communities did not have the current concept of "community" when they were built, so there were no public areas, "the door to the unit is the road", and there is no space for installing elevators.
In addition, the equipment floor where elevators are installed is underground, and the elevator optional area is often at the door of the unit. This involves a series of pipelines such as electricity, gas, and drainage. Some pipelines cannot be modified, and some modifications are too costly.
These factors will make some communities miss the elevator.
Zhang Jian's parents stayed at home most of the time. Only when the weather was particularly good would they go downstairs with the stair railing and sit on the benches in the yard.
This may be the daily routine of most elderly people.
"At present, our country is in a critical period in which the aging of the population shifts from rapid development to rapid development." said Li Jia, deputy director of the Pangu Think Tank's Center for Aging Society.
According to the seventh national census data, the proportion of the population aged 60 and over in my country reached 18.7%, of which the proportion of the population aged 65 and over reached 13.5%.
Not only is the size of the aging population huge, but the aging process has accelerated significantly.
The problem of the elderly is no longer a problem of a small number of people.
Allowing the elderly to participate in social activities more conveniently and safely is an important concern of the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Strengthening Work on the Elderly in the New Era" recently released.
Facing an aging society, Li Jia believes that two aspects of work should be done. On the one hand, aim at "incremental" and do a good job in the aging forward-looking design of new infrastructure; Aging transformation.
Regarding the basic travel of the elderly, Li Jia believes that we should not just focus on the installation of elevators. "We can develop some more popular and convenient downstairs tools according to local conditions."
In the past two years, the corridor mobility machine has entered the field of vision of many elderly people as an alternative option.
This is a device that allows people to move up and down by laying tracks on the stairs.
The media once reported that a grandmother Wu in her 80s in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, wanted to use this method to replace the elevator that was too late to get on, and realize the "freedom of going downstairs" for herself and her wife.
Grandma Wu contacted the manufacturer to conduct an on-site survey. The design plan obtained was to install a rail against the wall on each floor of the stairs from the 1st floor to the 4th floor, and install a seat on the rail. The cross-section of the rail is 12 cm x 11 cm.
The seat is folded against the wall when not in use, minimizing the occupied public area.
Regrettably, the corridor scooter could not be installed in the end.
Although street workers believe that it has little impact on buildings, there are still neighbors who worry about fire protection or affecting the quality of buildings.
Liu Lin bluntly said that in community work, installing corridor scooters is not an act encouraged by the community.
"Just like the barrier-free elevator used in the subway, it needs to be operated by the staff. The scooter is also a kind of electrical appliance. The movement and reaction ability of the elderly are not so fast. There may be danger in use. What should I do if I fall? ?"He said.
This worry also confirms what Li Jia said, the elderly need more innovative products to travel.
“In the past, the number and proportion of older people were smaller than those of other age groups, and related infrastructure lacked attention and investment. For a long time, the objective reality of weak foundation and weak foundation has been formed. Many enterprises and social organizations stop at the elder industry and the elder business. In addition, a large part of the reason is insufficient funds, it is difficult to fill this hole. Therefore, only when the government takes the lead in related construction and fills in the shortcomings, can enterprises and social organizations be able to invest in it." Li Jia pointed out.
At the same time, he believes that in the face of aging, the government, society, enterprises, families and individuals must participate in diverse ways to form a joint force.
Therefore, it is necessary to plan systematically in terms of institutional mechanisms and policies to allow more subjects to participate, innovate public infrastructure investment and financing and management and operation mechanisms, and promote new cooperation models.
(Reporter Chen Huijuan)