Category: Enforcement

Where the sun don’t shine

3 June, 2013 (11:35) | Alleyways, Boston, Broken Windows theory, Chauncy Street, Cities, Enforcement, Health, Local issues, public spaces, Sanitation | No comments

By:David A. Smith   All of us have a body paSrt where the sun don’t shine, and while it’s intimately connected to our personal ecosystems, we have only the vaguest idea what goes on back there.   It’s got a mind of its own   Cities have such places too, one of them less than [...]

Dangerous, overcrowded, invisible, informal, unenforced: Part 3, unenforced and invisible

8 May, 2013 (09:00) | Allston, Apartments, Boston, Building Codes, egress, Enforcement, fire, informality, Landlords, overcrowding, Regulation, Rental, Student housing, Zoning | No comments

By:David A. Smith   [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 [...]

Dangerous, overcrowded, invisible, informal, unenforced: Part 2, blocked and uninspected for ten years

7 May, 2013 (09:00) | Allston, Apartments, Boston, Building Codes, egress, Enforcement, fire, informality, Landlords, overcrowding, Regulation, Rental, Student housing, Zoning | No comments

By:David A. Smith   [Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]   Yesterday’s post on the tragic death of Binland Lee, in her attic room in an overcrowded student rental, dealt with the fire’s facts – and if that were all to the story, it would simply be a tragic incident.  But everything is connected to everything [...]

Dangerous, overcrowded, invisible, informal, unenforced: Part 1, dying in the attic

6 May, 2013 (14:42) | Allston, Apartments, Boston, Building Codes, egress, Enforcement, fire, informality, Landlords, negligence, overcrowding, Regulation, Rental, Student housing, Zoning | No comments

By:David A. Smith   Tragedy exposes an ecosystem’s weaknesses.  A rowdy college party, a lit cigarette, an overcrowded student house, a remote and small-scale landlord, informal subdivisions and excess occupancy, and a building inspection system that gives the illusion of enforcement.  Combine them and a young woman is dead.   Binland Lee, BU senior … [...]

It’s about time, five billion bucks’ worth: Part 4, A deal could sink the company

14 February, 2013 (09:00) | Enforcement, Fitch, Litigation, Moody's, ratings agencies, Regulation, Securitization, Standard & Poor's, Subprime, US News |

By:David A. Smith   [Continued from yesterday's Part 3 and the preceding Part 2 and Part 1.]   By now readers should be in no doubt, based on my initial post on of the Department of Justice suing Standard & Poor’s, reported in the Wall Street Journal (February 5, 2013) and a review of Justice’s initial [...]