NFPA Journal - Fall 2022 - 38

Perspectives
Something that shocked both Cecilia and I during this
investigation was learning how quickly a fire can get out
of hand and completely prevent anybody from being able
to do anything to save people inside. And so that was hard
to hear. But some of their pushback to our findings of
these systematic building code enforcement failures was
to pass the buck to other areas.
Did you work with the city to verify that the
information you had was correct?
MH We went through and discussed with the city every
single fire that we included in the report. That was to give
them plenty of time to make sure that we fully understood
what the situation was, that we weren't missing anything,
that it really wasn't just a one-off issue. And when we
found these 42 fires, it's hard to argue that 42 fires out
of the 140 in our analysis are just a bunch of one-offs.
Regardless, we went through every single one with them.
In the report, you write that " city officials routinely
put the interests of landlords above the safety of
residents. " How does the city prioritize landlords?
CR It really boils down to the
word of a landlord about something
being fixed being taken way
more seriously and given a lot
more weight than a tenant reporting
a dangerous situation. We saw
this again and again. We looked
at, for example, dozens of those
city hearings that we mentioned
where city lawyers plainly
dismissed proceedings even
though they knew-because their
own city inspectors were telling
them-that there were outstanding
issues at the properties, even
life safety issues. There were cases
in that review where landlords
would submit a grainy photograph
of a smoke detector as proof that
they had installed it without a city
inspector actually setting foot in
that property.
Speaking broadly about
complaints, we looked at hundreds
and hundreds of 311 complaints,
and we found that the city
couldn't come up with an inspection
for nearly half of them. So
that, to me, points to a systematic
issue-something that isn't just
one building, one house, or one
screw up.
38 | NFPA JOURNAL * FALL 2022
MH There are other things I think are interesting in
terms of how the city shows its preference to trust landlords
over tenants. One of the things city officials told us
is that they can't necessarily take every 311 complaint seriously
because somebody might be calling just to retaliate
against their landlord.
For the record, we found zero evidence of anything like
that happening. To the contrary, whenever we spoke with
experts and tenants in these buildings, we found an overwhelming
reluctance for people to call the city for fear
that their landlords would retaliate against them. They
cited many different reasons-people might be undocumented,
they might just be worried about a rent increase,
or about getting evicted.
How much do these issues have to do with a lack of
city resources? Would more inspectors solve the
problem?
MH You know, that's something that we naturally
assumed must have been an issue. But when we asked
the city if it was a lack of resources or if it needed more
inspectors or more funding, they would always tell us no.
They would say they just need
to better prioritize the resources
they had. And when we looked
at other cities, we didn't really
see any significant differences
between the amount of resources
being used in building enforcement
in Chicago compared to
other cities.
Journalists Madison Hopkins (left) and Cecilia
Reyes exposed systemic problems in Chicago's
building enforcement practices.
What is the root cause of
these building enforcement
issues, in your opinion?
MH The problem that seemed
to permeate every level of this
process was the lack of clear-cut
rules and procedures about how
to handle different situations and
violations. We found that missing
smoke detectors might be
handled, in some cases, with a
warning letter to the landlord.
Other times they were taken to
court, and there wasn't really any
rhyme or reason as to why that
would happen. There were so
many different examples of how
that type of subjectivity played
out badly. The idea behind it is
that inspectors are supposed to
be the experts, so they are given
leeway to make an appropriate
COURTESY OF CECILIA REYES
NFPA Journal - Fall 2022

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