High-Rise dystopia: Disabled tower block residents "threatened" for posting about broken lifts on Reddit

A Ballardian nightmare is underway at the Balfron Tower in east London, where London Centric spoke to disabled residents who have been stranded without working lifts for a week.

Disabled residents have been stranded in an iconic London high-rise tower block without any working lifts for a week, amid allegations they have been threatened by the building’s management company for posting about the issue on Reddit.

Business owner Peter Yu and student Vasundhara Gupte are both residents of the 28-storey brutalist Balfron Tower in Tower Hamlets, a high-rise east London tower built by a Bond villain namesake. They were part of a group of residents who posted on multiple Reddit forums last night about how many residents had been unable to leave their homes after both of the block’s lifts broke down on 13th May.

The Balfron Tower is often cited as the inspiration for JG Ballard’s dystopian novel High-Rise, later turned into a film starring Tom Hiddleston. The book depicts how the residents of a tower block descend into anarchic violence following disputes over, among other issues, the building’s failing lifts. While Ballard’s novel sees the residents resorting to eating their pets while engaging in ritualist violence, today’s occupiers of the block say they simply want the management company to take their concerns seriously and help access supermarket deliveries.

Yu, who is 58, has had a long-term spinal cord injury for over a decade, making it “excruciatingly painful” for him to use the stairs. He lives on the building’s 15th floor and said that he has not left his flat since both lifts in the block failed a week ago. A small balcony has provided his only access to the outside, he has only had frozen leftovers to eat, and his dog has not gone outside for a week.

He told London Centric that a representative from building management company Way of Life, which run the Ernő Goldfinger-designed block, knocked on Yu’s door this morning to ask who was responsible for the Reddit post and demanded that it be deleted. The representative allegedly told Yu that negative press coverage would mean “our goodwill will be gone”.

Yu described this as an “intimidation” tactic that made him feel “totally unsafe”.

“How can they blame the victims?” he asked.

The management company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegation it demanded the Reddit post should be deleted.

The residents “begged for help” in their Reddit posts, describing how elderly people and those with disabilities had “effectively been trapped in our homes for days” in the block.

“At the end of the day, it’s a safety issue,” Yu said, with the lack of lift access leaving the building “not fit for living”. He alleged that this was in contravention of fire safety rules – including the fact that one of the broken lifts was the designated fire safety lift. A spokesperson for the London Fire Brigade confirmed that the local team had been made aware of the issue.

Yu claimed that when he asked for assistance with carrying groceries to his flat on Saturday evening – something that Way of Life had promised assistance with in emails to residents apologising for the lifts’ failure – he was told that no assistance could be given past the 7th floor.

Gupte, a 22-year-old student whose hamstring injury makes it hard for her to use 15 flights of stairs, said she missed some of her course at Queen Mary’s University as a result of the lift breakdown.

After initially being repaired yesterday – after six days out of action – one of the building’s two lifts broke an hour later. One was briefly repaired before breaking again this afternoon, shortly after Yu presciently asked London Centric, “How do we trust that it is working today?”.

The Balfron Tower was designed as social housing by the Hungarian architect Ernő Goldfinger — the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s villain of the same name – in 1967, with a community-focused vision of ‘streets in the sky’. It is the sister building of the Trellick Tower in west London, which can be seen from trains heading into Paddington.

The Balfron Tower was controversially refurbished and sold off by Poplar HARCA, a local housing association, in the 2010s. After failing to sell the converted flats, which are separated from Canary Wharf by a busy road, the developer turned them into rental properties.

Yu said he pays £3,500 a month in rent for a 3-bedroom flat – “Kensington rate!” – while Gupte pays £2,500 for a 2-bedroom flat, both excluding bills. “We pay a lot of money to live here”, said Gupte.

Many of the building’s residents are migrants, said Yu, who came from Hong Kong two years ago and has lived in the tower for the last six months. This means that they might not be have community networks to lean on or be fully aware of their rights as tenants, he said.

The response to the Reddit post was one positive that emerged from the distressing situation, he said, describing himself as “really touched” by the flood of advice, offers to help, and sympathy. It’s “keeping us alive”, he added.

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