Why is New York City’s mayor blaming tenants for the deadliest fire in decades? | Ross Barkan

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On Sunday, New York’s deadliest fire in three decades tore through a building in the Bronx, killing at least 17 people. Among the dead were children aged four and five.

The New York Fire Department blamed a faulty heater and door for allowing smoke to spread through the building. The gate was not functioning as it should, said FDNY commissioner Dan Nigro. Residents told reporters on site that their doors often did not close as they were supposed to.

The new mayor, Eric Adams, rushed to the scene. Since taking office, he has impressed the public with his energy and verve, promising a town hall of action. In the Bronx, his message was clear: if we take away one message, he said, it’s: Shut the door. Close the door. Close the door.

It was ingrained in my head as a kid watching commercials over and over again, Adams said. We were going to dub this message, muscle memory is everything and if we can crack that, we can save lives by closing doors.

The story of the Bronx fire, however, is not one of personal responsibility. It has little to do with tenants remembering to close the doors. Future tragedies will not be averted by muscle memory alone.

By blaming individual actors, Adams instead lets the real culprits off the hook: building owners. Why did a tenant need to use a radiator? Why were the doors so defective?

Of note, one of the Bronx building’s owners, Rick Gropper, is a member of Adams’ transition team, a landing space for those who are likely to have influence in the new administration. At least six violations, over the years, have been inflicted on building owners by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Multiple violations cited issues with the doors, which are supposed to close to prevent the spread of fire and smoke.

Heat, as any working-class tenant knows, was another major issue. A renter told the New York Post that it emits just enough heat to say it emits heat, but that’s not enough to keep you warm, and if you don’t use a heater, you use your oven.

You can’t lounge around without a dressing gown.

The systems in place have sown this disaster. It’s not one person who decided to use a heater or another who couldn’t close the door. Building doors must close by themselves. Space heaters, in 2022, should not be needed in the dead of winter if building owners pay to send enough heat. This is the message that Adams, the new mayor, should have put forward: such underinvestment and neglect should be unacceptable in the wealthiest city in the Americas.

But the fact remains that the status quo, distressingly, is a layered reality where some live in million-dollar condos and others suffer on the fringes of the city, hoping not to freeze on the way to bed or die in a fire. the next day. Investors don’t buy buildings to house people; they own to make money, and when collecting rent from working-class tenants, services are cut to increase profit margins. Why send out a generous amount of heat when a little will do? Why pay to fix a door when, until a fire kills 17 people, everyday life is just tolerable?

The negligence of the elites is at the root of the devastation. The kind of negligence that forces tenants, many of them immigrants, to haul heaters into apartment buildings that should be liberally pumped with heat. A negligence that allows owners of millionaire buildings to ignore the multiple complaints of the Ministry of Housing Preservation and Development.

A different type of mayor would challenge the real estate industry, immediately, to do better. But New York hasn’t had this mayor for a very long time, if ever. Even Bill de Blasio, the self-identified progressive, closely allied himself with the biggest developers in the city and took millions of dollars from them. Adams, a former Republican, is far less tenant-friendly than De Blasio. The owners now have a dear friend at the town hall.

A simple closing the door campaign, which Adams will gladly jump into, is exactly what men like Rick Gropper want. More children and adults obsessed with their alleged culpability in collapsing apartment towers will mean a class of real estate investors that can continue to do what they have always done to make a profit. Yes, public awareness of fire safety is important and must continue. But unless the root causes of the carnage are identified and the bad actors named, little will change. Now 17 people are dead who didn’t have to die.

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