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No charges against landlord who rented illegal room to student who died in a fire there
By adamg on Sat, 08/22/2015 - 2:49pm
The Globe reports Suffolk County prosecutors concluded that while owner Anna Belokurova may have been an awful landlord, what with cramming 18 students into what was officially a two-family house with code violations, none of her actions led to the death of BU student Binland Lee in 2013.
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Comments
Anyone Surprised?
If prosecutors cared about slumlords and dangerous housing, Allston would be a very, very different place.
This is a green light to other landlords to continue doing whatever they want to make a quick buck at the expense of everyone else.
Pull permits???
Picture a nice big square house. Now, near the first floor door, picture a flight of stairs to the second floor, with stairs to the third floor.
Code does not require two egresses from every bedroom.
Now, say you want to make it into a two unit. Do your paperwork, the right amount of egess, proper wiring, plumbing, etc.
Maybe an outside set of stairs from the attic in case the inside one becomes untenable.
No one can live in a basement apartment.
Remember that nice set of stairs to the second floor? It was walled off to separate the apartments.
Landlords, you can do it right. Hire licensed contractors, everything aboveboard and you greatly decrease the odds of something like this happening.
The only way to solve a
The only way to solve a problem is to get to the root of it and solve that. The root of this problem, along with soaring housing costs, is a simple one that no one ever wants to acknowledge: the colleges and universities themselves.
Boston area colleges are universities are nothing but bloated, runaway corporations that have been getting the deal of a century by not paying property tax. Year after year the BRA and City Hall cut unfair deals to these greedy land grabbing institutes. On top of that, year after year they continually flood the city with these rich, entitled students that do nothing but cause problems. Even further, most of these schools don't even pay the city what they should for other services. It kills me that as I commute down Huntington every morning I see Boston DPW trucks emptying the trash cans at the corner with Ruggles Street or Parker Street. The streets may be Boston property but they're at the edge of multi-million dollar schools who don't pay for anything! Whya re y tax dollars paying for trash removal on property owned by Northeastern the non-profit?! They continually grab land, raise admission rates, but then don't build housing which turns it into the city's problem. This has to end.
But oh, people love touting the economic benefits of having all the colleges here. Well let's see. Approximately 55% of land in Boston is tax exempt. BU owns all of Comm Ave from Kenmore to Packard's Corner and then some. Harvard owns all of Lower Allston plus more. Northeastern and the Colleges of the Fenway basically have Huntington from Mass Ave to Brigham Circle plus a good chunk of the Fenway and Riverway. Suffolk and Emerson have all that property downtown. There are a bunch of schools throughout Back Bay, some of which baffle me. Sorry to pick on the little guy, but what does Fisher even do? This is mostly prime property. Yeah, total economic benefit letting them not pay taxes. Want to know why Boston Public School funding is down the tubes? Our tax base keeps disappearing. We're totally the Athens of America, education if you're an entitled brat from a rich family.
Solution? If a college/university/educational institution owns an unreasonably large amount of land, they pay taxes on it. If you are truely a non-profit entity then you don't need to own that much land. Alternatively, no more land purchases/building approvals unless they prove the building will ease the burden their students put on the city. These institutions need to stop acting like we owe them something (BU especially). The taxpayers and city owe you nothing.
Spoken like a true nimby that
Spoken like a true nimby that doesn't really have a solid grasp on the situation. You complain about the trash being picked up on parker and ruggles but you've clearly never driven by at 6am to see NEU doing it on Parker, Huntington, Forsythe, St Botolph, and Gainsborough. How about the $250,000 per day snow melter they rented for the City and the school to use during "snowmageddon". Northeastern would love to build new dorms but the neighborhood has a major problem with change. Just getting their new science building built, they made major concessions and are revitalizing carter playground as part of the deal. Get outta here with you're arm chair solutions the problem isn't just the colleges.
The biggest owner of tax exempt
The biggest owner of tax exempt property in Boston is government: city, state, and federal. Massport owns the most.
universities and hospitals own about 5% of city land. Because the colleges are clustered it gives the impression of being more.
http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/e4373a7a-6330-...
You are offensively wrong
It's hard to believe you are trying to place the tragic death of a woman at the hands of her scum landlord and the city's own inspectors on the idea BU isn't paying enough in taxes. You are, good sir, are a moron.
Do some reading before touting mindless rants against the Universities. You'd find the ISD had inspected the unit and could have prevented the tragedy but failed to follow up due to sloppy paperwork and general incompetence. Taxes had absolutely nothing to do with it. ISD isn't lacking in money, it's lacking in leadership and a culture of institutionalized negligence.
But on the subject of taxes, you might want to do some research on that too. BU as well as most other large Universities do make payments to the city. Yes, these are lower payments then if the businesses were not tax-exempt. But unlike other businesses, BU runs their own police force which saves the city millions. BU also provides enough on-campus housing to all students who want it. Boston's students bring in an enormous amount of revenue for the city -- a whole lot more then a few startups and a hundred Dunkins. If you want to know why Boston weathered the financial crises so well you can thank these "freeloading" universities. The biggest long term fear for the city is that online classes will drain the area of students along with the high paying, high tech industries which hire them after they graduate.
But back to the main point... The woman is dead because of a massive failure of Boston's inspectors to do their job. Taxes has nothing to do with it. Fixing the ISD is a whole lot easier then solving gang violence yet Walsh seems to be inept at both.
How about a history lesson
BU and NU and surrounding schools wanted dorms and the locals shot them down.
The neighborhoods are responsible for this situation, not the universities.
Go move to Detroit or Buffalo if you want to see what happens without the universities: no jobs.
that's BS
illegally creating a second unit in the building without a permit meant that the work was done without ensuring it met code, like proper means of egress. she died because she couldn't get out.
one of the problems I see is that there are more students being accepted to the local school than there are rooms for them. the city is coddling the local colleges as much as they are the slumlords that profit off this situation.
This is disgusting
If she hadn't kept the house in such gross violation of safety, the careless disposal of smoking materials would not have resulted in death.
That said, one thing the universities could do to undercut these slumlords is start building more bare-bones, single room, apartment style acommodations. A lot of the reason students move off campus is that a single bedroom in an iffy off-campus apartment costs the same as a double or triple in a corridor style dorm like Warren Towers. Adults don't like living in barracks.
Huh?
Oh, so 8 people crammed into a shitty, decrepit, fire-trap house is somehow better?
If you hadn't look up as of late you might have noticed BU built two huge high-rise "luxury" dorms. Yes, they are pricy but they are safe and the price was clearly indicated before they enrolled. And that price isn't that much more expensive then the Allston shithole units either.
BU dorm rules are stupid
People who have jobs and work over spring break? They have to find another place to live for that week. Ditto for summertime. Can't make it home over thanksgiving? Tough shit for you, too.
i knew
That chick in passing. She was really passionate about her studies. Thats my story.
Important quote from the article
18 students in a 2-family house, with illegal conversions, is not intentional and reckless?
Do the laws need to be changed, do existing laws need to be enforced, or do we rely on civil liability as a deterrent to reckless landlords?
How do you prove intent?
If neighbors had a record of filing complaints, citing dangerous conditions, and asking for change, would that help to build a case that the landlord had a history of intentional/reckless conduct?
If you have a problem landlord on your street, what's the best way to build a clear history of concern? (And hopefully get action.)
Truckers and Slumlords
Free get out of consequences free pass with every murder! Your negligence is sacred in MA!
All you have to do is say BUT I DIDN'T MEAAAANNNNN TOOOO!
Something tells me the idiot
Something tells me the idiot smoker(redundant I know) who killed her and sent 6 firefighters to the hospital won't be going to jail either, despite obviously deserving it.
The smoker started the fire.
The smoker started the fire. I hope he/she is held accountable.