Bronx Mother Unable To Get Building To Install Ramp For Wheelchair-Bound Daughter

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A Bronx mother wants a wheelchair ramp installed at her building to have better access for her daughter.

CBS2's Elise Finch reported that Maylene Otero Negron, a single mother of three, struggles to get her wheelchair-bound 9-year-old daughter inside.

Negron lives in a first-floor apartment, but she has to negotiate steep stairs to get into the building. She ends up carrying her daughter upstairs and into her apartment first, and then comes back for her wheelchair. Negron does this every day.

"The only places I go, and anybody here can tell you, I take her to school, to her doctor's appointments and to church," she said.

Negron's daughter Keilany was born with hydrocephalus and cerebral palsy, leaving her unable to walk or talk.

Negron moved to New York from Puerto Rico four years ago to get better medical care for her daughter.

She said she knew this building wasn't wheelchair accessible when she moved in, but was desperate to stop sleeping on relatives' couches and get a space she could afford so she could properly care for her special needs child.

Negron said her landlord told her getting a ramp was possible, but it never happened.

"He said, 'OK, you investigate, you find out and I'll put it for you,'" Negron said. "Just like that."

Negron said the long-term solution for her family is a new apartment, but she's been trying to make that happen for four years. In the meantime, she desperately needs a ramp installed at her current apartment.

"I can't do anything because if I'm thinking about taking her to the park I have to think, OK, I have to go down the stairs, then come back up when I'm tired and then the boys. It's too much," Negron said.

Some of Negron's neighbors would also like a ramp installed.

"I have to have an operation on my feet and it only aggravates the condition going up the stairs like that," Luis Cruz said.

Brenda Cruz said, "It's quite difficult. I think everybody would benefit from it."

The building's owner said he looked into constructing a wheelchair ramp, but he simply can't afford it.

A Buildings Department spokesperson said since the structure was erected before the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed, "Federal law does not require the owner to make retroactive changes to the building."

Negron has applied for a number of apartments in wheelchair accessible buildings. She's also been on a waiting list for city-owned apartments since 2012.