Oakland’s high-risk choice
To protect residents from eviction, city rarely shuts troubled buildings
Under pressure to protect vulnerable residents after the Ghost Ship warehouse fire, Oakland officials largely abstained from deploying their most potent tool against problem properties: the red tag.
In the three months after the inferno killed 36 people in an illegally converted building — the deadliest California fire in more than a century — inspectors slapped the crimson do-not-enter notice on just four Oakland properties, according to city records obtained by The Chronicle.
The reasons? Two neighboring homes were damaged by falling tree limbs during a storm. Another was gutted by a fire. And the fourth was a suspected gambling parlor, boarded up after a law enforcement raid turned up drugs, guns, stolen cars and illegal slot machines, on top of unsafe wiring and a sewage spill.
The city’s reluctance to clear residents out of dangerous buildings arose again last week after a huge fire swept through an occupied threestory halfway house on San Pablo Avenue in West Oakland. Four people died, and more than 80 were displaced.
Emails released by the city Friday showed that firefighters had urged their command staff to shut down the build-
ing as early as January because of life-threatening conditions. Instead, Fire Department managers cited the building for deficiencies, allowing the residents to remain.
City and fire officials say Oakland is replete with old and poorly maintained properties that could pose dangers to their occupants. Mayor Libby Schaaf ’s office identified 18 unsanctioned live-work buildings throughout the city in the aftermath of the Dec. 2 warehouse fire. The list was based on complaints or public safety calls, and many others could exist.
Building inspectors, fire marshals and code-enforcement officers red-tag properties that pose imminent threats to occupants, typically after fires, flooding or earthquakes. But they can also red-tag buildings for a range of dangerous conditions, from overloaded electrical systems to haphazard construction projects. In less severe cases, officials can post a yellow tag, which means that people are allowed to enter briefly, usually to collect their belongings, but shouldn’t stay long.
“The bottom-line measure is a determination that the building needs to be evacuated because it presents an imminent hazard to life and safety,” Claudia Cappio, the assistant city administrator who oversees the Building and Planning Department, said of Oakland’s threshold for red-tagging. “If you do not leave, your life will be threatened. That’s a pretty tall order.
“We don’t do it lightly,” she added. “The standard has to be met . ... It’s a complete disruption to people’s lives.”
In the case of the halfway house, firefighters called for a shutdown of the building after finding problems with the sprinkler system, a lack of fire extinguishers, debris piled up in front of electrical meters, a padlocked fire escape and faulty smoke detectors, among other problems. Maria Sabatini, the acting assistant fire marshal, gave the property owner 30 days to correct the problems. Three days before the fire, caused by an unattended candle, she gave the property owner a list of deficiencies he needed to correct.
Schaaf initially defended the Fire Department’s decision to issue only a citation to the property owner. But after the emails revealed that firefighters wanted the place shut down, she said that her earlier comments were based “on information I received from professionals . ... But I am not a fire inspector.”
Although inspectors base most of their decisions on the California Building Code and
local ordinances, they have plenty of latitude to consider other factors, such as whether residents will be left homeless and the environment surrounding a property.
“There’s no book that exists that says if you have five electrical issues, for instance, then you must red-tag a building,” said Larry Breceda, president of the California Association of Code Enforcement Officers and the public safety manager of Duarte (Los Angeles County). “Sometimes you have to make calls on the fly . ... The codes are written in a way so that you have that discretion.”
That means enforcement sometimes differs city to city, and politics can come into play. Richmond, Santa Ana, Denver and other cities immediately red-tagged makeshift artist spaces in the weeks after the Ghost Ship fire.
But in Oakland, Schaaf has pledged to help the warehouse artist community and keep people in their homes while trying to ensure those spaces are safe.
Instead of displacing residents, the Oakland mayor has directed city authorities to work with property owners to bring the buildings up to code. Schaaf said soon after the Ghost Ship fire that she would not let “our emotions lead to hasty decisions or witch hunts.” Records show she followed through on that promise, but at a cost.
The city documents indicate that building inspectors and code-enforcement officers were no more inclined to red-tag properties after the Ghost Ship fire than they were in the past. Comparing the three months after the blaze to the same time period one year earlier, little had changed.
From December 2015 to the start of March 2016, seven Oakland buildings were redtagged — three more than in the most recent interval. All but one were the result of fires. The exception was a single-family home whose foundation and cripple wall failed.
The mayor’s insistence on not displacing residents raises questions about whether political considerations have affected the pace and will of the city to inspect and condemn dangerous properties.
Firefighters appeared to be frustrated with the protracted response of Fire Department management to the West Oakland property in the weeks before the fire. As she released the emails, Schaaf announced Friday that she would hire more inspectors and accelerate the reviews of problem properties.
Bill Strawn, spokesman for San Francisco’s Department of Building Inspection, said of the West Oakland fire, “The “By our actions or our lack of actions, protecting our residents doesn’t seem to be at the top of our list.” Noel Gallo, Oakland city councilman habitability situation sounded like they couldn’t maintain the building. I suspect that our code-enforcement process has been a little more rigorous than Oakland’s.” But he and officials in other California cities added that red-tagging should be a last-resort tool, and that building inspectors should lean on landlords to make sure properties don’t get to that level of danger.
Councilman Noel Gallo, who represents a swath of East Oakland where the Ghost Ship warehouse is located, said the city needs to ramp up its enforcement and hold landlords accountable for fixing unsafe living conditions.
“Either the safety of our residents is a priority, or it’s not,” Gallo said. “Right now, by our actions or our lack of actions, protecting our residents doesn’t seem to be at the top of our list.”
Gallo said Oakland officials shouldn’t be afraid of temporarily displacing residents while repairs are made to their homes.
“I think what has happened in Oakland is we don’t enforce the rules from the street level to the buildings, and property owners take advantage of us,” Gallo said. “They clearly know what the rules are, what the requirements are to maintain safety and health. So there’s no excuse around it.”