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Short circuit caused Allston fire in what turned out to be an illegal rooming house, BFD says
By adamg on Wed, 08/31/2016 - 6:34pm
The Boston Fire Department reports the early morning fire that displaced 11 people, injured one firefighter and caused roughly $1 million in damage to 30 Myrick St. was a short circuit in a second-floor bathroom.
The department adds:
Inspectional Services will be dealing with property owner about running an unregistered rooming house.
Neighborhoods:
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Comments
shocking news
shocking news
Markets work
We're a damn fine place to live. People like to live in good cities. Keep building housing.
Hey Inspectional Services,
Hey Inspectional Services, while you're on a roll, how about dealing with the other unregistered rooming houses on that street, and the next one over, and the next one over, and the next one over.. It's really not like they're hard to find. It's been two years since the Globe Spotlight report on overcrowded housing that was supposed to change everything, and one year since the Globe reported nothing had been done. Pathetic.
And even more
There are several illegal rooming houses in the city that dont involve students.There are scores of building In Fields Corner, housing Vietnamese immigrants, also in Allston housing Central American Immigrants, and these are only the ones I personally know about. And they're not always in residential buildings. Often they are as simple as cots set up in the back room or basement of commercial buildings.
Inspectional Services has a long history of ignoring these properties, which only enables those that own them.
guys, guys, I just got the best idea!
It's a local cable show called "To Catch a Slumlord." We set up students to check out rooms and apartments for rent, and after seeing the deplorable and illegal conditions on hidden camera, the host comes out of hiding and busts the slumlord. And there's an added twist, like a bucket of garbage gets dumped on their head or something.
I mean, if Boston is going to do absolutely nothing about these people, we may as well have some fun with it.
Two Words
Wiretap Law
Then how do investigative
Then how do investigative journalists get away with it?
They do it in one-party
They do it in one-party recording consent states, not two-party like MA, I bet.
Market economy
Isd only has about 40 inspectors there are many many apartments , legally they can only enter a unit upon consent and normally upon request. Folks dont complain due to cheap rent and other factors such as friendship, immigration status or fear of rent increase or eviction, these issues are in every city and in most countries, its way beyond one departments fault. The ultimate burden is on the owner to provide safe , decent sanitary housing. As isd cannot be held responsible for a private parties real estate arrangements.
Globe
The Globe spotlight series explained all this. ISD is being called by students and parents who are freaked out at the conditions of the units. A lease can't circumvent building codes. ISD is slow to show up (when they do) and there is no follow-up for the problems they find. ISD blamed an old paper-based system but the Globe series implied a lot of corruption and incompetence.
This fire isn't ISD's fault but that department is screwing up big-time across the city and particularly in student areas. They have the power to enforce the codes (bringing in police when needed) but they are dropping the ball.
If only
we could focus on building housing that average people could afford instead of building all of this "luxury" housing (lipstick on a pig, and so on).
And no, I'm not condoning unsafe and illegal housing as an alternative. But if our city leadership would crawl out of the back pockets of developers, and stop backing people into these corners, that could hurt demand and maybe even help get these slumlords to get out of the game altogether.
Owners also own 2 Hastings St., WRox
Which is listed as a 3_family (wonder how many roomers live there).
Will their insurance cover the million
if they are operating an illegal rooming house?
Probably will
That's because the short circuit likely had nothing at all to do with how many people lived there or what they did for a living.
Need more details
Was it really a "rooming house" or simply ~10 roommates living in a 5 bedroom apt?
This is not a simple issue, but if a bunch of people can live safely in one building and not bother the neighbors, just maybe that's OK. (Note that this fire was due to bad wiring, not because there were too many people in the home.)
Padlocks
There were padlocks on interior doors (illegally), which makes it lean towards "rooming house".
I actually agree with the live and let live approach to some extent if everyone's happy (and living nearby, I'm not aware of any problems with the tenants of that house), but.. Landlords who take two bedroom apartments built for families at the turn of last century, and chop them up so that anything that isn't a kitchen or bathroom becomes a crappy $1000 bedroom, generally aren't that concerned with the safety of the place. So the problem isn't the 11 people crammed into the building, it's the fact that a landlord not caring about overcrowding also didn't care about wiring safety and probably many other things.
Safety vs. freedom
If 10 adults want to live in five bedrooms, I don't want the government pursuing that to the exclusion of fixing other problems.
Did anybody else read two days ago that some Chinese guy bought a bunch of units in Millennium Tower for $16 million? He's not going to occupy every single one of them, and neither is his family.
So, somebody born in and who lives in this country might face scrutiny for living among many others in a house in Boston...but some foreign guy can buy up a bunch of real estate for profit? This city stood up to the Inner Belt five decades ago, under the argument I read once that "we're not going to destroy neighborhoods to save some guy from New Hampshire 20 minutes on his way to the South Shore." What will we do about our housing crunch?
FTR
I used to live at this address. There were 5 bedrooms and 5 roommates in my unit with two full bathrooms. The only thing that made this a "rooming house" was that we each had separate leases and locks on our doors which were more like dead bolts than padlocks. We all split utilities and were young working professionals or grad students.
That's a rooming house
This is great info to have, thanks! Too busy today to read the whole thing right now, but according to this: https://www.masslegalhelp.org/housing/legal-tactics1/chapter18-rooming-h..., you pretty much just defined a rooming house.
And as I said above, the problem isn't with rooming houses or the people who live there (it was a really quiet house!) (and properly managed rooming houses might not be a bad solution to the student/ young professional housing crunch!). It's the fact that landlords who think they can fly under the radar when it comes to the legality of their building probably are flying under the radar when it comes to things like safety and maintenance.
Oh, and there's this from page 4:
My guess is that wasn't happening :)
The laws are stupid
A family with ten kids would be much less safe.
WTF does it matter how people are related anyway? It should be a rated occupancy system. Full stop.
My nephew rented a room in a
My nephew rented a room in a boarding house in Somerville that was run by a lawyer. I couldn't figure out any way the set-up was legal (separate leases, landlord provided utilities, separate locks),
FTR
I used to live at this address. There were 5 bedrooms and 5 roommates in my unit with two full bathrooms. The only thing that made this a "rooming house" was that we each had separate leases and locks on our doors which were more like dead bolts than padlocks. We all split utilities and were young working professionals or grad students.
Finally something we can agree on :-)
But you might not agree with what I think is a great idea: a huge tax on investment-only condos that are not continuously occupied by either the owner or a renter for, say, longer than three months. I'm no lawyer or legislator, so I'm sure there many subtleties and potential loopholes that suggestion would miss, but something designed to prevent just the type of investment purchasing you refer to in your post.
Broken clocks, man
I don't love taxation but I can't think of a better answer either beyond "keep building."
i may be missing something,
i may be missing something, but i think the problem is not that more people means more chances for fire. it's that more people means more chances for people to die in a fire.
Rooming house vs. tenants
It's not just too many people living there. The sort of person who would run a rooming house will like convert it illegally (breaking code, not getting a permit, mot meeting fire code), making it a dangerous place to live in and a danger to adjacent properties (fires can spread). The fire on Linden was converted illegally to a two unit building to increase revenue for the landlord. The people had to leave the upper unit on what would have been the house's fire escape/back porch as they were cut off from the front door (stairs blocked off to separate the units). Not sprinkerled, no central fire alarm, etc. A woman died. This type of landlord will have electrical work done by a maintenance guy instead of an licensed electrician (as required by law - code is law) or a permit so the work is not inspected and approved. It's not for the fines or mad about too many unrelated people living there - it's about people not dying from neglect and greed.
Are there any *registered*
Are there any *registered* rooming houses around any more?
Not nearly enough of them...
...but a few can be found, some operated by nonprofit/charitable institutions.
There are also sober houses for people in recovery, which I think would qualify as a rooming house, but obviously with added restrictions.
Just so everyone has the facts straight.
The building was a two family 30-32 Myrick St.30 Myrick St had 5 bedrooms. 2 floors and 2 full bathrooms. It was not overcrowded, I know because I used to live there. I don't know the set up of 32 Myrick St.