Cities track down illegal, dangerous residences

With zero ventilation in the windowless firetrap, a thick ooze of mold crept freely down the walls to the cold concrete floor. Temporary partitions hid the boiler, creating a living space and bedroom, with ceilings too low for an adult to stand upright.

The rest of the building wasn’t much better, with broken doors, smashed walls, and musty, stained carpets.

City Building Commissioner James Casieri says he wishes he could say the appalling conditions in this bootleg living space were the exception, rather than the rule, in illegal housing being discovered in a citywide crackdown this fall, in an initiative similar to what Quincy authorities have pushed the past few months.

But after shutting down 120 illegal apartments, including this one, in Brockton over the past year - and demolishing 12 unsafe buildings in the past three months - Casieri says he can’t.

“Greedy landlords know they are doing something wrong,’’ he said, referring to building owners who rent out substandard living quarters to people who cannot afford anything better. “And still they do it.’’

Casieri and others on Brockton’s Code Enforcement Task Force are sure there are scores more illegal apartments tucked in all corners of the city. They are crammed into homes and apartment buildings by owners who tap into water and power sources, jury-rig the wiring, and put at risk desperately poor tenants who have few options. The basements of many such dwellings harbor health threats ranging from carbon monoxide to allergy-inducing mold, Casieri said.

The Brockton City Council recently heeded the building commissioner’s request and set the daily fine at $300 for landlords who don’t bring their properties up to code.

Council member Linda Balzotti, the mayor-elect, said she voted for the measure because the city must show it is serious about the crackdown.

“Illegal apartments are a serious safety issue both for the people who are living in them and for our public safety, building, and health officials,’’ she said.

In Quincy, authorities are also raising the per-day fine against irresponsible landlords to $300.

The Illegal Rooming House Task Force, made up of fire, police, building, and health officials, like Brockton’s, has identified 150 illegal apartments in the past year alone. The group had gone after slumlords since 2006, but stepped up its efforts after a March fire in an illegal basement apartment at 100 Robertson St. killed a man and his two young sons and injured his wife.

Quincy officials had already put the apartment’s absentee landlords on notice and, acting on a tip, had planned to drop in for an inspection, but it burned two days before the visit. The landlords have been indicted on charges including manslaughter, and Terri Knight, the survivor in the fire, has filed a $10 million wrongful-death lawsuit against the owners in Norfolk Superior Court.

Quincy’s head of Inspectional Services, Jay Duca, said the fatal blaze spurred scores of tips on illegal apartments, and the task force evacuated six such apartments on Freeman Street a week later. Inspectors there discovered that no smoke detectors in the illegal apartments were working.

“The biggest problem is inadequate egress for basements or attics,’’ Duca said. Plus, every habitable space is supposed to have windows that equal at least 4 percent of the floor space, he said.

Many dwellings for poorer families don’t have that ratio, he said.

That’s why officials in Quincy, as well as Brockton, are enthusiastic about a receivership program through the state attorney general’s office that allows communities to target residential properties with “persistent, unremediated building, health, and safety code violations’’ for potential action.

That means that unless absentee owners address their obligations, a municipality can enter into contracts with developers to rehabilitate the properties to make them good and safe places for others to live.

Officials in Brockton and Quincy see the initiative as an effective, innovative way to address neighborhood blight and counteract the destructive influence that problem properties have on neighborhoods.

“I’m looking into it,’’ Duca said. “But you need developers who are interested in it, and it needs management.’’

In Brockton, as they led visitors on a tour around their city recently, Casieri and building inspector Jim Plouffe drove by neighborhoods rife with shabby, boarded-up homes containing illegal apartments. They said city officials are also thinking about implementing a property maintenance code.

“These places are like a cancer, spreading from one to the next,’’ Casieri said, pointing out his window. “Who wants to live there?’’

Passing the corner of Spring and Newbury streets, Casieri and Plouffe pointed out the spot where illegal wiring sparked a fire in a home several years ago that killed two young girls who tried to escape the flames by hiding in a closet.

Then they drove on to the corner of Hereford and Spring streets, where, by contrast, a block of condemned buildings has been transformed by the Brockton Housing Authority into a pretty, tidy row of affordable homes.

That’s what members of the task force and others eventually want, officials say.

Plouffe said task force members learn about illegal apartments from tips or calls, to the police, fire, or water departments, for example. Once they’re there for a look around, he said, it’s easy to tell whether an apartment has been added illegally, either by its shoddy construction or poor wiring, or by the extra utility meters that have appeared on the outside wall.

Fires have razed illegal dwellings on Ford Street and Fairmount Avenue recently, officials noted. The preference is to find those properties and fix them before disaster strikes.

Casieri said authorities will quickly shut off power to dwellings they deem unsafe.

“Then we have to turn people out,’’ he said. “It’s hard when they have innocent kids. But the goal is to eliminate unsafe conditions in city buildings.’’

Michele Morgan Bolton can be reached at mmbolton1@verizon.net.