NFPA Journal - Fall 2022 - 39

decision. The downside is that there's
no accountability when somebody
doesn't make the right call.
You wrote in your stories that
the city has tried to make several
reforms over the years, but that
" strict enforcement repeatedly
gave way to broken promises,
watered-down regulations, and
abandoned reforms. " Can you
give us an example of one of
those failures?
MH There are examples where the
city actually does pass measures
which, at face value, seem like something
that would help enforcement or
help make buildings safer, and then
they just don't enforce them.
One of those reforms came out
of the fire with Shamaya Coleman's
children, which was championed by
the father of the youngest child who
died. He was pushing for a reform
that would better enforce the building
code against landlords who have
a long history of serious building
code violations. We found that as that
proposal moved its way through the
city government, it was weakened
quite a bit, but then even after it was
passed, they only really enforced it for
about a year. And then they just kind
of quietly abandoned it. It's still on
the books today in Chicago, it's just
not enforced.
What changes, if any, have
occurred in Chicago's building
enforcement efforts since your
stories were published a little
more than a year ago?
CR There are a couple of changes,
but they don't really address
those systematic problems that we
discussed. Nothing touching on
how complaints are handled or that
better define the criteria for a proper
response to a dangerous violation.
There aren't even any proposals
currently that address problems with
the city's technology or outdated
records. What has happened is the
city of Chicago fell in line with the
" "
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.
rest of Illinois in terms of requiring a
phase-in of long-lasting, tamper-proof
smoke detectors. Before we published
our stories, the city announced it was
passing an ordinance that required
this to be phased in over the next 10
years or so.
And then the list that Madison
mentioned regarding problem landlords
was revived with a promise that
there is going to be new scrutiny of
landlords. But when we examined the
criteria for that list, we found that
it misses a lot of buildings that have
issues. The city itself has lawsuits
against properties that wouldn't qualify
for inclusion on this new version
of the scofflaw list.
Do you have a sense of whether
these enforcement problems are
unique to Chicago, or are they
indicators of a larger problem in
cities across the US?
CR We didn't go over the code
enforcement process in other major
cities to the same extent, so I hesitate
to say anything specific. But I do
think it's fair to say that this imbalance
between tenants and their
landlords exists everywhere.
Since we published the series, we
noticed that there were big fires elsewhere,
including one in the Bronx
involving a space heater [where 17
people were killed] in a building with
known issues and a landlord that
was well known to tenants and to the
city itself for not keeping up their
properties. There was also a similar
fire where four children died in
the St. Louis area. In many of these
fires, the media seems to focus more
on the actions of the tenants than
on whether the city ensured that a
building was safe. I think that many
people tend to view these fatal fires
as contained tragedies rather than
looking at whether there was something
about the building or about the
owner that the city knew already or
could have handled better. That is a
blind spot that exists throughout the
country.
In interviews, you've both
described winning the Pulitzer
Prize as bittersweet. What do you
mean by that?
MH When we found out, it just felt
very unreal. It still feels very unreal.
But there's also a sad aspect to it.
Cecilia and I are both really proud
of this work, but any journalist that
puts in this amount of time and asks
their sources to do the same for a
project like this, they're doing it
because they want to see some kind
of change come out of it. And we
just haven't seen that yet on this. It's
still such a pervasive issue. So while
it's very exciting and we're proud of
it, there's definitely an element of
disappointment.
CR The weekend we found out we
had won the award was Mother's
Day weekend, and I had actually just
called Shamaya to check in and wish
her a happy Mother's Day. So when
the Pulitzer happened, I was also
thinking about her, about the people
that spoke with us, the mothers that
spoke with us, the family members,
and just about the sheer amount of
pain and loss that could have gone
differently had the city done its job.
So there was that bittersweetness
to it. But even though there is more
work to be done, winning the award
is still an incredible honor.
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