Personal responsibility

 

The deadly fire that occurred at the Twin Parks North West apartments in the Bronx (New York City) resonated with me.

There were multiple reports of safety systems, like automatically closing doors, "malfunctioning".

Two weeks earlier...

The ever-lovely and compassionate Mrs ERJ and I were researching apartments for Kubota.

One of the apartments that was available was on Lansing's south-side. The office staff was tardy in coming back after lunch so Mrs ERJ and I decided to walk around the complex and look it over.

More than half of the apartments had been "Red-tagged" by the Safety Department.

Walking back to our vehicle (the office staff still out-to-lunch), we encountered the head of maintenance. I asked him about the backstory.

"The parent company that owns this complex also owns a second complex in the Lansing, Michigan area. Somebody at the other complex said something that one of the County Safety Inspectors interpreted as an insult" he said.

"Consequently, the inspectors inspected every apartment owned by our parent company and wrote us up for every infraction.

I wanted a little more resolution. "So was it chicken-shit stuff or are we talking about Black-Mold and radon?"

He looked at me like I was nuts. "Nearly every tenant either takes the batteries out of the smoke detectors or removes it from the wall and pitches it into the trash" he said.

So I can imagine that some (all) of the "malfunctioning" automatic doors were "malfunctioning" because tenants found them inconvenient when carrying groceries from the elevator into their apartments.

Perspective

According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting database, none (zero) of homicides committed in New York City in 2020 were committed with a rifle, much less an "assault" rifle. The data is similar for 2019, nobody was murdered in NYC with any kind of rifle. By comparison, 19 people died in the Twin Parks North West fire due to safety equipment "malfunctions".

The data shows that plastic grocery bags, pillows and butane lighters are infinitely more dangerous than "assault" rifles in New York City.

There are many reasons to leave the big-city. One of them is that policy-makers do not have the stomach to address the issues that actually endanger people. They are trapped by their narrative.

Victimologists are trying to frame this tragedy as a flaw of Capitalism. The heating system was unreliable and tenants resorted to space-heaters to stay warm. More accurately, the tragedy was at least partly caused by "rent stabilization" which put a thumb-on-the-scale in favor of tenants thereby removing all economic incentive to improve (or maintain) critical systems.

Twin Parks North West apartments

Twin Parks North West apartments (where the fire occurred) fall into the age group of apartments that are "Rent Stabilized".

Rent Stabilized apartments have their rent set by the legislature of the State of New York. Yearly rent increases have been between 0% and 4.25% over the last twenty years.

With the ability to recover the cost of upgrades and major capital expenditures dead-headed by limits to revenue increases, the only way to increase (or maintain) profit is to throttle capital expenditures.

Many major systems (heat, air-conditioning, roofs, windows, doors) have a life-expectancy of 20-to-50 years. The economic pressure, in the absence of the ability to raise rents to recover those costs, to milk those systems for one-more-year is very intense.

Stay away from crowds

Progressives might have a vision of people living in densely packed hives in perfect harmony. 

One reason I choose to not live in a city is because humans are not bees. I am not ready to have my life depend on the fellow in the floors below me replacing the batteries when they get old or to not tape some steel washers over sensors or disconnect the spring-dashpot that automatically makes the fire-doors on their floor swing shut.

Nor am I ready to trust that managers will enforce rules. Buried somewhere in the rental agreement is language that safety equipment is not to be disabled and eviction is a potential consequence. Never happens.

The Progressive narrative is that "things" kill people, not lack of personal responsibility. Every person in big cities marinates in that kind of thinking.