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In local news
- In early January, a fire in a Philadelphia public housing rowhome killed 12 people. Six smoke alarms in the home didn’t sound during the fire, and the apartment didn’t have sprinklers, a fire extinguisher or a fire escape, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Investigators said a child playing with a lighter near a Christmas tree caused the fire, but Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel said: “It is much too simple and it’s wrong to blame a 5-year-old, or blame a family that really doesn’t have any other options, for the fire problem in the United States. It’s much bigger than that.” Renters wait years to get into public housing in Philadelphia and around the country.
- How much does police overtime cost? For the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, overtime amounted to $48 million during the past three years. Seventeen employees more than doubled their salaries thanks to overtime pay, a Flatwater Free Press analysis found. A two-year investigation from NJ Advance Media likewise revealed that in 2019, the average New Jersey police officer received $123,239 when including earnings outside their base salaries, like overtime.
- In Washington, more than 200 teachers, students and parents claimed they became extremely sick after being exposed to polychlorinated biphenyls, a banned group of chemicals known as PCBs, at the Monroe School District’s Sky Valley Education Center.
New from BigIfTrue.org
High demand and a low supply of rentals forced rents up 11% nationally last year, according to a recent report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. While the highest rent increases were in five-star buildings, rent for lower-quality rentals rose 4%.
Despite paying more for housing, some renters have little choice but to live in homes with serious health or safety issues, from lack of running water to fire hazards.
Some things to know about substandard housing:
- In 2019, 3.3 million occupied rental units were considered moderately to severely inadequate, meaning they had structural problems affecting things like plumbing, electricity and heat.
- Cities and counties enforce local housing codes, but those statutes often don’t address lead and mold.
- Two bills in the Oklahoma Legislature would make it easier for renters to pursue urgent repairs that their landlords fail to make. One of the bills would make it illegal to evict renters for filing complaints about health and safety violations, a practice that’s only allowed in seven states.
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Thank you for reading Hard Reset. I’m here at bryant@bigiftrue.org and 405-990-0988.
– Mollie Bryant
Founder and editor, BigIfTrue.org
