March 31, 2017 - SF Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-firefighters-wanted-halfway-house-shut-11042357.php\
The city’s reluctance to clear residents out of dangerous buildings arose again last week after a massive fire swept through an occupied three-story halfway house on San Pablo Avenue in West Oakland. Four people died, and more than 80 were displaced.
Emails released by the city Friday showed that firefighters had urged their command staff to shut down the building as early as January due to life-threatening conditions. Instead, Fire Department managers cited the building for deficiencies, allowing the residents to remain.
Instead of displacing residents, the Oakland mayor has directed city authorities to work with property owners to bring the buildings up to code. Schaaf said soon after the Ghost Ship fire that she would not let “our emotions lead to hasty decisions or witch hunts.” Records show she followed through on that promise — but at a cost.
The city documents indicate that building inspectors and code-enforcement officers were no more inclined to red-tag properties after the Ghost Ship fire than they were in the past. Comparing the three months after the blaze to the same time period one year earlier, little had changed.
From December 2015 to the start of March 2016, seven Oakland buildings were red-tagged — three more than in the most recent interval. All but one were the result of fires. The exception was a single-family home whose foundation and cripple wall failed.
Bill Strawn, spokesman for San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection, said of the West Oakland fire, “The habitability situation sounded like they couldn’t maintain the building. I suspect that our code-enforcement process has been a little more rigorous than Oakland’s.” But he and officials in other California cities added that red-tagging should be a last-resort tool, and that building inspectors should lean on landlords to make sure properties don’t get to that level of danger.
Councilman Noel Gallo, who represents a swath of East Oakland where the Ghost Ship warehouse is located, said the city needs to ramp up its enforcement and hold landlords accountable for fixing unsafe living conditions.
“Either the safety of our residents is a priority, or it’s not,” Gallo said. “Right now, by our actions or our lack of actions, protecting our residents doesn’t seem to be at the top of our list.”
Gallo said Oakland officials shouldn’t be afraid of temporarily displacing residents while repairs are made to their homes.
“I think what has happened in Oakland is we don’t enforce the rules from the street level to the buildings, and property owners take advantage of us,” Gallo said. “They clearly know what the rules are, what the requirements are to maintain safety and health. So there’s no excuse around it.”
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-firefighters-wanted-halfway-house-shut-11042357.php
