Abington, PA Building Safety: Elevator Maintenance (2026)

Abington Township's housing standards, Chapter 98 of the Code of the Township of Abington, adopt the International Property Maintenance Code of 2021 and then amend specific sections. Section 606.2, as rewritten by the § 98-2 amendment, sets a minimum operating requirement rather than merely requiring elevators to exist: in any building equipped with passenger elevators, not less than half of the total number of elevators, with the result rounded up to the next whole elevator, must be maintained in operation at all times the building is occupied.

This means a building with three elevators must keep at least two running, and a building with two must keep at least one running continuously during occupied hours; it is not enough to keep one elevator serviceable if the fraction required by the count is higher. The section carves out one exception: a building equipped with only a single elevator is permitted to take that elevator temporarily out of service for testing or servicing, since the general fifty-percent rule cannot otherwise be satisfied by a one-elevator building without shutting the building down.

The amendment sits inside the same chapter that separately requires smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms and heat supply in rental units, reflecting the township's broader habitability enforcement scheme administered by the Code Enforcement Division, the office designated under the § 98-2 amendment to IPMC § 103.1 to administer the adopted code within Abington Township. Building owners who take elevators out of service beyond what § 606.2 permits are subject to the code's compliance and enforcement mechanisms, including stop-work orders where applicable.