The Bronx Fire and Demand for Adequate Housing
A recent fire, started in a Bronx apartment building, has brought an uproar of demand for better management of housing.
Jeff Reuben, CC BY-SA 4.0
The apartment that caught fire in the Bronx did not have any fire escapes, as well as no sprinkler systems.
On January 9th, an apartment fire killed 17 people in Bronx, which is a borough of New York City in the state of New York. The fire had been started by a space heater that was running for many many days in a bedroom of the apartment, told by fire officials. The door, to the apartment where the fire started, should have closed automatically, which allowed the smoke to spread throughout the whole building. The fire being started by a space heater has led people to question if the tenants are really to blame, especially since residents complained about the lack of heating at the tower, according to NBC News.
A lawyer for the tenants named Robert Vilensky, told The New York Times, “This was a totally preventable tragedy. Had the landlord and city done the things that they are required to do, 17 people would be alive and scores of other unharmed.” Vilensky’s two clients have filed a lawsuit against the owners of the building, for the self-closing doors not shutting, the owner’s not providing reliable heat to the building, and issues with the fire alarms going off frequently. The apartment building also had no fire escapes, or even a sprinkler system, throughout the building.
Since the fire, New York politicians demanded that Congress impose new regulations on housing complexes that are privately run. The new regulations would require landlords to install temperature monitors in buildings to ensure that the apartments are receiving correct amounts of heat. Ritchie Torres, who is a Congressman in The Bronx, told New York Post, “We have to ask ourselves what was the deeper cost. Why were tenants using fire heaters in the first place. And the answer has to do with the chronic lack of heat and hot water. Space heaters are often a cry for help and a cry for heat, often an act of desperation for decent and dignified housing.”
Juanita Lewis, who is an organizer with the New York social justice group Community Voices Heard, told NBC News, “We’re still operating under the context of housing segregation and having to prove who is worthy of protection and living in decent housing. The fire was started by a space heater because there was inadequate heat. The situation in the Bronx is extremely sad, unfortunate and disheartening, but it’s not uncommon.” Zoning across the country has historically promoted segregation, even after the Supreme Court ruled against the constitutionality of zoning laws that targeted black Americans in 1917, local governments responded with creating exclusionary zoning laws that was basically the same, only more discreetly. These early zoning laws that we are still dealing with now, forces African Americans into neglected apartments with maintenance issues that put them at a higher risk for fire, poisoning, and et cetera. According to the New York State Department of Health, though black Americans make up 13 percent of the United States, they represent 25 percent of people who are killed in residential fires in the United States.
Theodore Hamm, who is the journalism chair and an associate professor who focuses on urban planning at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, New York, told NBC News, “There are so many structural impediments to getting problems resolved. If you’re a tenant in one of these buildings and there’s a need for upkeep and maintenance, then what do you do? You can call your management company and complain, but if they don’t do anything, what’s the next step? You could call the city, but will that remedy the complaint? In that position, you don’t have much power.”
This apartment building was part of a rapid expansion for Camber Property Group, particularly in the Bronx. Days before the fire, Camper, and a few others, announced an $85 million deal to buy a nine-building complex in Harlem, according to The New York Times. Camper Property Group has been taken to court by city housing officials throughout recent years to enforce building repairs. Recent issues with the Group has shown struggles in other apartment buildings.
Kelly Magee, who is a spokeswoman for the building’s owners, told The New York Times, “We are devastated by this terrible tragedy and are cooperating fully with the Fire Department and other agencies as they continue to investigate.”
