The recent fires involving three houses around the Tufts campus make it clear that meaningful action is needed from not only landlords, but also from Medford and Somerville. Students and other tenants deserve to know that their houses are safe; at this point, it is not clear that much of the rental housing in the area meets basic fire safety standards. Yet another fire should spark both the city and the school into immediate action.
Medford and Somerville need to be more aggressive in following up on the promises they made in the wake of the 2003 Harris Road fire that resulted in the death of Tufts student Wendy Carman. At that time, both Medford and Somerville officials proposed an ordinance that would make landlords responsible for scheduling an inspection with the building commissioner. Landlords who chose to ignore the inspections would have been subject to a $100 fine for every day that their property was occupied without an inspection. These regulations have not been instituted because of concerns of the cost of increased inspection and code enforcement. While there is little doubt that increasing house checks will initially be costly, Mayors Curatone and McGlynn and their respective municipalities stand to save substantial costs associated with firefighting and other emergency services that are needed when a fire starts.
Connected to this, it is ridiculous that Somerville is still dragging its feet on the approval of Tufts' new dorm construction plan. Although the Somerville Historic Preservation Commission has valid concerns regarding the construction of the new dorm, the University has equally urgent concerns about the safety and comfort of its students. The more opportunities for on-campus housing, the less students will be forced to live off campus in potentially dangerous houses.
All this name-blaming sidesteps the fact that the responsibility rests with renters to ensure that their property is free of any obvious unsafe conditions, and notifying landlords. Students do not consult the Office of Off-campus Housing (OCH) for information nearly enough as well as to get contact information for building inspectors. The fact that OCH is still not automatically used by Tufts students is an utter failure on the part of both the school and the students.
Both the Tufts community and those surrounding it will be well-served by a rental market that is markedly safer. The tragedy on Harris Road served to remind this community what can happen when basic safety standards are ignored. Tufts students have lost their housing, and in one case their life, due to recent house fires. All responsible parties need to talk less and take more action to ensure that local housing is safe before there is another preventable fire, and perhaps another preventable death.
