The families of the victims of the Jan 9. Twin Parks apartment fire have recently filed lawsuits against the owners of the building, accusing them of allowing numerous safety violations to go uncorrected in the building. 

This is a reflection of the horrendous state of tenant rights in the Bronx. It is believed that the cause of the fire was a resident’s space heater left on for multiple days at a time, a heater that would not have had to be used if the owners of the apartment building had left the heat on during the coldest period of the month.

Negligent landlords and the fires they cause are, unfortunately, not new to this borough. The ’70s were characterized by a rash of fires spreading throughout the South Bronx as the unprofitability of properties made repairs more expensive for landlords than abandonment, and the city defunded numerous fire posts in the area. There was arson, yes, in cases where owners would rather take the insurance money than have to deal with the money sink that a property in the South Bronx could be at the time, but a large portion of the fires were caused by the simple fact that nobody cared about these buildings. Even when those buildings were home to people who had spent their whole lives in the neighborhood. 

The spread of fires in the Bronx is, at its core, an issue of poverty. As an area stops bringing in money for investors, it doesn’t get as much government funding. Which, naturally, makes it less likely to bring in money from investors, who don’t want to put their money where the city won’t put its budget.

The poorest residents of the city are those most likely to be essential workers during the pandemic. These people spend their days in danger of constant exposure to the virus, and then come home to a building where they face a landlord who won’t respond to complaints about code violations. Further, the Bronx is home to an increasing number of immigrants, a population that, especially when considering the proportion of undocumented immigrants that the city’s economy would collapse without, is particularly affected by poverty. New York City, the cultural melting pot, seems to be telling its most vulnerable populations that they just can’t make it here.

We’re seeing history repeat itself — the Bronx is still an afterthought to the New York government.

Why is it not getting any better? If you went back in time 50 years and told an inhabitant of the Bronx about January’s fire, you’d be lucky to even get a raised eyebrow. Go on to tell them about the lack of heating in the building — how residents had to keep space heaters running indefinitely in the coldest month of the year — and you wouldn’t even see them blink. At what point does stagnation become neglect? When does neglect turn into malice?

It’s been half a century, and the Bronx is still burning.