[Continued from yesterday’s Part 2 and the preceding Part 1.]
Now we know that 87 Linden Street, where Binland Lee died in the April 28 fire, was way over-occupied, because that was in the unstated but manifest interest of both landlord and residents.
As I’ve observed elsewhere, in any three-way bargain, two parties can collude to their mutual benefit by ignoring the third party’s requirements.
Let’s you and me gang up on him
Here it’s simple – I the landlord will forget to tell you that your new wall is prohibited; you the resident will over-occupy the apartment and provide me with the rent I seek.
That happened here, repeatedly. Nor was that the only element of informality:
Officials are also looking into whether there were any changes to the building’s approved layout that could have made it dangerous. A modification granted in 1992 included a fire wall that closed the internal stairway between the first and second floors, which created a maze-like path from one story to another, interrupted by a steel door that served as a divider between the units.
One can feel the loom of wrongful-death lawsuits that can be filed against both the landlord, Anna Belokurova, and the City of Boston’s Department of Inspectional Services. Taking a property that was built as a single-family residence and blocking up inter-floor stairways without assuring reliable egress from every separate room is asking for a deadly fire.
From the third floor, where Lee’s bedroom was, an internal stairway was the only way out, city officials said. From the second floor, there is an exterior stairway to leave the building.
The stairs didn’t help Binland Lee
That is absolutely a fire hazard and a building code violation, as any professional landlord knows. So is allowing over-occupancy that could easily result in hoarding of material, much of it likely to be flammable.
We’re also concerned about whether or not some of the spaces in the building were being appropriately used … and whether or not everybody had adequate means of escape,” Glascock said.
Records released by the Inspectional Services Department show that Belokurova has been cited dozens of times for not properly handling garbage disposal at the property.
Citations are one thing; enforcement is something else. Where was the enforcement?
Glascock said that a property on Reedsdale Street in Allston that is owned by Belokurova has an outstanding violation for an illegal basement.
There’s an old saying about apartments: for every roach you see, there’s a hundred you don’t see. So it goes with illegal apartments too.
Time to clean the refrigerator
According to court records, Belokurova filed for bankruptcy in December 2010, listing assets of $1.8 million and debt of $1.6 million.
[Editor’s note: the internet says Anna Belokurova filed bankruptcy on 2/1/09 in NATICK, MA Case #09-10806.]
Those bankruptcy figures seem wrong: liabilities should be greater than assets unless Ms. Belokurova was facing a liquidity crunch, which seems implausible.
As part of a court-ordered proceeding, she filed monthly statements of income on her four properties, including three in the Boston area and another in Hyannis.
Evidently the bankruptcy trustee decided to allow Ms. Belokurova to stay as “debtor in possession” with no checking into the condition of her properties.
Her bankruptcy ended in August 2012.
Since she remained in possession of her properties, it must have been a Chapter 13 (reorganization) filing, not a Chapter 7 (dissolution) … and that too is curious.
Boston University student Erica Ross, 22, returned Monday morning to the fire scene, where, she said, both she and Lee had been living since last September. Ross was at her boyfriend’s home and not at the Linden Street building when the fire broke out. Ross said Lee’s room was one of four bedrooms on the third floor.
TRAGIC: Erica Ross, above right, holds back tears as she returned yesterday to her apartment at 87 Linden St. in Allston, left, to pick up some belongings after a fire that killed a 22-year-old Boston University student.
Glascock cited Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s recently passed rental housing inspection ordinance as a tool to combat absentee landlords and unsafe conditions at rentals marketed to students.
That ordinance requires property owners to register their rentals.
Registration for the city’s stock of 140,000 rental units begins in May, and inspection will follow in 2014, with about 20 percent to be inspected each year over the next five years.
Some form of inspection seems essential, the more so in light of the next day’s Boston Herald (May 1, 2013) article (red font):
One of their own, dead: BU students mourning Binland Lee
The mother of a Boston University student who died in an early-morning fire Sunday after getting trapped in the attic bedroom of an Allston rooming house told the Herald she feared for her daughter’s safety after visiting the packed dwelling.
Xu Mei Kwong, a Chinese immigrant from Canton Province and the mother of Binland Lee, 22, said through her brother, the girl’s uncle, she worried about her daughter’s living conditions during a trip to Boston, but her daughter brushed off her mother’s concerns.
“She was in her house, and she did not like what she was seeing,” said the uncle, Da Ren Kwong, from the Kwongs’ Brooklyn, N.Y., home. “She said there were wires exposed. Her mother was worried. Binland said it was ‘OK.’
All HUD properties are inspected, at least as frequently as every three years, according to standard promulgated via HUD’s Real Estate Assessment Center (REAC). Every property receives a score consisting of a number (0 to 100) and a letter (A through C).
Like going to the dentist, except for your junction boxes
Score 90A or above and you won’t be visited for three years. Score 60 or below and it’s annual inspections; and if you get a C, health or safety hazard, immediate correction is required. Exposed wiring or open junction boxes instantly earn you a C.
Even a C is a failing grade
[Full disclosure: My for-profit company’s capital planning subsidiary does REAC pre-inspections. – Ed.]
‘IT WASN’T SAFE’: Paul Miller, above, a tenant at this Allston rooming house where a fatal fire broke out Sunday morning, said ‘too many people’ lived there.
Paul Miller, 66, who raced out of the building after waking up choking from smoke, said there were “too many people” in the house. “There were bags of trash in the hallways. … You would trip over the stuff. It wasn’t safe,” he said.
Glascock confirmed the building was littered with trash bags.
These are health violations, of course, and the landlord’s responsibility, though they are also lease violations – that is, if all the residents were on the lease.
“It would have been one of the buildings (inspected) … because the owner has another property that is a problem property,” Glascock said.
Shortly thereafter, a lawyer for Ms. Belokurova surfaced, with this smokescreen reported in the Boston Herald (May 2, 2013) (blue font):
The lawyer for a landlord accused of running an illegal rooming house for college kids that burned Sunday, leaving a woman dead, claims the Linden Street home was inspected repeatedly and never found to be in violation.
“The property has also passed inspection many times in the 10 years she has owned it. We will continue to provide full cooperation to all agencies, authorities and investigators until the cause of this tragedy is determined,” Frank Fragomeni Jr., Anna Belokurova’s lawyer, said in a statement.
I am not representing anyone in this case
One may deduce that Mr. Fragomeni was relying on statements from his client that he’s willing to mouthpiece but not to affirm himself:
“The safety of Anna Belokurova’s tenants has always been her top priority,” Fragomeni said in a statement. “I have been informed that she had in place two leases for the two units, one for seven people and another for five people, and was proactive in safeguarding the property.”
Evidently Mr. Fragomeni realizes that his client will be sued, and having filed bankruptcy once already, she may be unable to avail herself of that remedy again, because you can’t file a Chapter 13 personal bankruptcy more than once every two years.
He did not return repeated calls for comment.
That claim lasted less than half a day, as theBoston Herald (May 2, 2013) later reported (red font):
An Inspectional Services spokeswoman refuted the owner’s lawyer’s claim the house passed “many” inspections in the past decade.
“We are not aware of any type of many inspections in the past ten years,” said spokeswoman Lisa Timberlake.
Ms. Belokurova’s troubles are just beginning:
Several telephone calls to Belokurova, who has a listed address in Newton [and apparently a property in Hyannis as well – Ed.], went unanswered.
Normally I am skeptical of tort litigation as a remedy for tragedy, but delving into this unfolding story is changing my thinking, for as reported in a further article in the Boston Herald (May 2, 2013) (brown font), the apartment’s unsafe conditions directly led to Binland Lee’s death:
The early morning fire that ripped through an Allston rooming house, where a Boston University student was found dead, was caused by the careless disposal of “smoking material,” city fire officials said today.
It started with careless smoking material
Not just ‘smoking material,’ but in an illegally blocked space:
The blaze at the Linden Street home started Sunday in the area of an interior staircase that was blocked off from the first floor, but was an “open space” that could be accessed by the stairs to the second floor from the rear of the 2½-story house, according to a fire department statement.
“It started in that space,” said Boston Fire spokesman Steve MacDonald. “It was basically a dead space”
It certainly was, and it made the attic a fatal space.
Binland Lee, a 22-year-old marine biology major who was slated to graduate this year, was found dead in an attic apartment.
Not only was Ms. Lee trapped in the attic, firefighters were unable to get to her in time, for as reported in the Boston Herald (May 3, 2013) (red font):
Firefighters unable to gain entry to 87 Linden, with Binland Lee dying inside
Firefighters had to fight their way into the rear of the building, but were unable to get into the attic where they later found the body of BU student Binland Lee, 22.
The case for landlord negligence appears strong. Even if the apartments were over-occupied, as they probably were, with roommates not on the lease and the landlord looking the other way, the landlord had duties to prevent over-occupancy, and also building code requirements for minimum egress.
Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney David Bradley, a member of the office’s senior trial unit and a one-time arson point prosecutor, has been assigned to the investigation and will be working with Boston police detectives, according to a statement from District Attorney Daniel Conley’s office.
“We investigate every unattended death to determine whether charges are warranted against any person in any capacity,” Conley said. “This case is no exception. We’re not prejudging the case and the probe is in its very early stages. We’ll follow the evidence wherever it leads, and we’ll apply the law fairly to the facts before we make a charging decision.”
Conley’s office noted that the criminal probe into Lee’s death will go beyond the investigation into the cause and origin of the fire.
87 Linden being inspected after the fire
The property across the street, 84 Linden, which burned last year, is now a vacant lot. That fate may also be in store for 87 Linden.
After Sunday’s fire, the property, assessed at $615,500, was a total loss, said a spokesman for the Boston Fire Department, Steve MacDonald.
It should be.
87 Linden after burning out: the lot at lower right may be the vacant parcel that used to be 84 Linden
Lee’s family in Brooklyn, N.Y., is so devastated by the loss they haven’t arranged her funeral or considered legal action yet, her uncle said yesterday.
“We don’t have any lawyer at this point. We don’t know what we’re going to do,” said Da Ren Kwong, Lee’s maternal uncle, his voice breaking with emotion. “We’re just trying to put Binland to rest.”
Let justice be done.
‘SO SAD’: Boston University senior Binland Lee, 22, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was passionate about her major, marine biology.
