Officials punish a landlord instead of themselves

Recently, there was a residential fire in St. Paul, and 7 people were injured. Since the fire, city officials have jumped all over the landlord with blame and citations for code violations. There were 7 people (2 mothers and their 5 children) living in a space that, by code, should have had only 2 occupants. The accidental fire has allowed political "leaders" to issue forth self-righteous rhetoric.

City Council President Kathy Lantry said "one way to send a message to landlords is to throw one in jail." "There is a part of me that is stunned by the total lack of regard for the human condition on the part of that homeowner..."

St. Paul Fire Chief Doug Holton said his department is seeing more instances of overcrowding in rental housing than in the past. He believes there are economic, political and immigration issues at work.

"People are looking for good places to live, but affordable housing is hard to find," he said. "Unfortunately, some landlords are willing to bend and break the rules."

Unfortunately? Hard to find? It isn't hard, it's impossible. In what way is it unfortunate that the landlord allowed these 2 women to live in a crowded apartment at low cost? Are we to assume that the women were FORCED to take the small apartment? Are we to assume that they could have found a larger apartment for the same cost... an apartment that legally could hold 7 people? Are we to assume that the women were just too dumb or lazy to find better accommodations?

I doubt it. Nobody likes living in cramped quarters, especially with kids. It's a lot safer to assume that this apartment was as good as the women could afford, and that they were damned glad to have found it, and could have cared less what the law was. That's safe to assume because they were renting the space by their own choice.

Where would the women and their children have been living if the code had been enforced? BLANK OUT. That question politicians will never ask. The answer might be "on the street" or in some deserted building. Since they chose to live in that cramped apartment, it's safe to assume that they passed up even worse living conditions.

The real villain in this story is NOT the landlord, nor the renters who chose to live there. The real villains are the city and their damned codes that continually drive up the minimum cost of housing to the point that the poor end up having to resort to living in overcrowded spaces. The fact is that the Mayor and council members could care less about the poor, as long as they stay invisible. If they cared, or even pretended to care, they would modify the codes to allow builders to use less expensive methods and materials, and to build truly affordable housing. But... allowing that would depreciate the taxable value of city property, and it would also invite more poor into the area - both of which are the real issues being avoided by politicians.

Meanwhile, the landlord's whole building has been condemned... all 5 apartments. No word about where all the other residents will go. Almost certainly, to less desirable space, or they would have already moved. Also meanwhile... city departments are having a turf war about who gets to enforce more rigid codes and claim credit for "solving" a problem.

Fire Marshal Steve Zaccard said "The codes are in place to prevent this outcome. The codes weren't met in this building." From that we are to assume that if the violations hadn't occurred, the fire wouldn't have happened, or the people wouldn't have been injured... or somehow, it would have been better. There is no way to make that assumption. There are seriously overcrowded and unsafe living conditions everywhere, because it's the only way the poorest of citizens can afford to live here.

As long as we have politicians, there will never be any housing so safe that an accident will fail to raise a call for still more safety requirements... and even more expensive housing, leading inevitably to still more overcrowding and unsafe conditions. It's a vicious circle of the kind that only government can create. This tragedy was not caused by a landlord who let extra people share a space at a cost they could afford... it was caused by the wrongheaded belief that we can set minimum standards of housing high enough to avoid accidents.

Cites have, for many years, blamed all housing problems on landlords and builders. They've torn down immense numbers of cheap living spaces by labeling them blighted, and then replaced them with housing priced out of reach of the poor. That a city official should even PRETEND to care about the poor is hypocrisy at it's worst.

Love Canal redux

George Santayana, philosopher, coined the oft-repeated phrase,
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

It has now been over 50 years since the infamous Love Canal occurance. Briefly, a land site in Niagara Falls (a canal project that wasn't completed) had been used as a waste dump for some 30 years, first by the city for chemical waste, then by the U.S. Army. In 1947, Hooker Chemical bought the site and used it for their own waste until it was filled in 1952, when they closed the site and backfilled the canal. The local school board tried to buy part of the site from Hooker, on which they wanted to build an elementary school. Hooker refused to sell, and went to extreme lengths to convince city officials that the site was unsafe for public use.

Eventually, with the threat of eminent domain, the city forced Hooker into selling the property for a dollar. Hooker complied, only with their thorough explanation of why it was a disastrous idea. Hooker had sealed the area carefully, but the city forced their way through the seal, built the school, dug sewers, and approved construction of homes... with no warnings to the homebuyers.

By the 70's, it had become obvious that people in the area were suffering serious medical ailments from the chemical pollution, but only a bitter struggle by residents resulted in President Carter declaring a state of emergency. Eventually, the government relocated more than 800 families and reimbursed them for their homes. Occidental (parent company of Hooker) spent more than $200 million to clean up the site, and Congress passed the Superfund law holding polluters accountable.

Love Canal is a classic example of a private company trying it's best to be responsible, being overruled by government, yet being punished for the results of the government action.

Amazingly, St. Paul has a similar situation occurring , as reported in the St. Paul Pioneer Press:

The Minnesota Supreme Court won't hear a case over a disputed and polluted tract of land near West Seventh Street, clearing the way for one of the biggest neighborhood developments in St. Paul history.

The decision signals the end of high-stakes litigation between St. Paul and ExxonMobil, which owns the former tank farm and fought the city's efforts to acquire it through eminent domain.

Although the company offered to give the land to the city free of charge, it does not want homes built there because of concerns about pollution.

The city, however, has grand designs for a new upscale neighborhood perched on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. City officials have said the site can be cleaned up safely for housing.

The Minnesota legislature recently passed an eminent domain reform law that would have prevented St. Paul's coercion of ExxonMobil, but the legislation "grandfathered" projects already underway. ExxonMobil was willing to sell the land with prohibitions on residential development.

St. Paul council member Dave Thune, whose ward includes the project, known as Victoria Park, said: "Finally we can get past the polluters of the world and get on to building a community." Yes, this is the same Dave Thune who led the prohibition of smoking in bars and restaurants. Seems that "pollution" is merely in the eye of the beholder.

So, ExxonMobil, like Occidental 50 years earlier, is being forced, through eminent domain, to sell land they are positive should not be used for residential purposes. Why would they lie? Who knows more about the pollution in place there? Who knows more about pollution clean-up?

Obviously (like the school board of Niagara Falls did) Dave Thune believes he does. As an example of how erudite and responsiveThune is, here is his response , two years ago, to a long, impassioned appeal from bar-owner Sue Jeffers about the then-pending St. Paul smoking ban (which passed):

I think you've been breathing too much frenchfry [sic] grease. We'll just ignore your bizzare [sic] and addled ideas.

dave

Elected officials are ordinary citizens, and are bound to be out of their depth on many issues. Can't blame them for that. We can, however, blame them for assuming and exercising powers that take them far beyond their competence, and using their position to inflict their incompetence on the rest of us. THAT is inexcusable, and it's precisely what is happening all over our nation, as local elected officials come to believe that their rights are unlimited, even by common sense. Thune's, and the city council's, determined ignorance is criminal in this case, and many innocent people are likely to suffer untold grief because of it.