The recent apartment fire in the Bronx was the deadliest housing fire in decades. How could things have been different? What can be done in the future? What policies will make a difference and reduce housing injustice?
The Bronx fire tragically took the lives of 17 people — 8 of which were children. Dozens of others were hospitalized with significant injuries. A quickly defined cause was blaming a space heater. Yes, a faulty space heater caused the fire. But can the deaths all be blamed on a defective space heater?
The fire remained confined to one apartment. The smoke, however, was able to travel. Doors were not up to code – they lacked automatic closures allowing dense black, deadly smoke to travel through the 19 story building.
A list of concerns includes:
- The open doors.
- Lack of outdoor fire escapes.
- Heat and ventilation complaints.
- Complaints about alarms going off so frequently they grew to ignore them because they were always false alarms.
Not only was the Bronx fire tragic. This tragedy struck predominantly poor African Americans in Section 8 housing receiving governmental rental assistance. The pandemic has taken the governmental focus away from housing and more on the pandemic. Yet, housing injustice is at an all-time high, tenants organizing and even refusing to pay rent. Particularly in New York, the eviction moratorium comes to an end, and tenants will begin to lose housing resulting in the neediest populations becoming homeless. New York could struggle with mass homelessness.
Ground zero for evictions: This is the status of the Bronx at the moment, and it will only get worse. Additionally, specific rental vouchers will not be transferable to other rental housing. Investors and landlords control the most at-risk populations in New York, and the result will be continued criminalization of the poor.
It is not uncommon for housing to change hands so often that the tenants no longer know who owns the building they live in. This not knowing makes it almost impossible to get assistance for their housing needs. The housing crisis is not just in New York, and nationwide funds have shifted from housing assistance to pandemic assistance.
The nation needs a significant governmental response to the ever-increasing housing crisis.
