Renting the Wrong Place Could Be Hazardous

BU is urging students who live off campus to be aware of their rights as tenants. This Brighton Avenue building was recently condemned by the city of Boston. Photo by Flickr contributor Matthew in Boston

Binland Lee, a BU senior studying marine biology, had fallen to sleep in the wee hours after a Saturday night party. She awoke after dawn to a housemate’s warning scream: the apartment house they occupied with seven other students in Allston was aflame. Trapped in her attic room by impenetrable black billows in the hall and a 26-foot jump to the lawn below her window, Lee (CAS’13) died from smoke inhalation that April morning last year.

These details come from a Boston Globe investigation into dangerous student housing. “Heedless landlords, scant oversight, and intense demand for student housing would turn 87 Linden into a case study of the city’s broken student rental housing system,” the report said of Lee’s building. Among the housing violations cited in the report were the number of tenants—nine (the city permits no more than four undergraduates to live full-time in a house) and only one exit from the floor below Lee’s room. Lee’s family, alleging the apartment was in illegal condition, is suing the landlord and the real estate brokerage company that rented the apartment to Lee.

With a new school year under way, the University is advising students who live off campus of their rights as tenants, the need to be vigilant about safety, and the city and BU resources that can help those students stay safe.

Spurred by the Globe investigation, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh has secured area colleges’ agreement to disclose addresses of students living off campus, which Walsh deems essential if the city is to stop overcrowding in apartments. (BU had already provided its students’ addresses following Lee’s death.) Walsh’s administration says it’s trying to inspect 30,000 rental units this year.

BU students living off campus are beyond the purview of the University’s rigorous fire safety plan, and federal statistics show 86 percent of college fire deaths since 2000 happened in off-campus housing. The University and the city of Boston provide online resources to help protect against such tragedies as Lee’s.

The Boston Fire Department has a web page of home fire safety tips, and the city has a web page with a home safety checklist. Every tenant should make sure that smoke detectors are working and notify the landlord immediately if they’re not. (Three quarters of residential fire deaths occur in homes without a working smoke detector.)

Another city web page, Top 10 Things Students Need to Know, lists renters’ rights and things to know, while yet another, Ten Tips for Moving to Boston, lists resources like the mayor’s 24-hour service center for reporting problems and requesting services. BU’s safety website details the University’s fire regulations and fire safety advice. The University also posts a fire-safety-at-a-glance page.

Even simple, commonsense precautions can save life and property. Not using candles is one: wax-with-wicks are the most common fire-starters among college students. That’s why BU dorms ban candles, as well as incense, open flames, and smoking. The US Fire Administration’s safety tip sheet notes five common factors in fires in off-campus student housing: lack of fire sprinklers; missing or disabled smoke alarms (do not disable smoke alarms, no matter how annoying the occasional cooking-triggered blast); haphazard disposal of cigarettes; tenant drunkenness leading to misjudgments; and combustible upholstered deck and porch furniture.

Other highlights from these various safety experts:

• Don’t overload electrical outlets.
• Have a fire extinguisher within easy reach. Know where it is. Also purchase flashlights and extra smoke detectors and batteries for both. The University is working to have local stores, including Barnes & Noble at BU, stock these items and fire safety information sheets.
• Have an escape route planned and make sure it’s always free of debris.
• Whenever an alarm sounds, assume it’s for a reason and get out.
• Make sure there is a smoke detector outside each sleeping area in the apartment.
• Have a carbon monoxide detector on each level of the house.
• Never use a gas stove or oven to heat your place; it could lead to carbon monoxide poisoning.
• If you grill, watch where you do it. Boston and Brookline ban charcoal grills on wooden porches. And make sure you put out the embers with water when you’re finished. As for gas grills, state law forbids their use or storage anywhere inside or above the first floor of any residence.

BU’s Environmental Health and Safety website includes information that is also distributed to students at housing fairs on both campuses, typically in April and May, says Bob Whitfield, director of campus and clinical safety. That information includes a fire safety checklist, emergency preparedness kits, fire safety questions to ask before signing a lease or moving into an apartment, how to host safe parties, and more, Whitfield says.

If precautions fail and a fire breaks out, the best advice is the most obvious, according to the experts: get out and call the fire department.