Without radical changes in safe, affordable housing, our most vulnerable residents remain in danger

I have a robust group chat with friends where we routinely share book recommendations.

Usually, I have no problem rattling off some favorite reads — recently, Our Migrant Souls by Héctor Tobar and Gun Country by Andrew C. McKevitt.

But the other day, when someone asked what everyone was reading and recommending, I had nothing. Because what had last left the biggest impression — what has since been weighing on my thoughts — wasn’t a book at all, but a devastating 48-page civil rights lawsuit filed last week over the 2022 Fairmount fire that killed 12 people, including three sisters and their nine children ranging in ages from 2 to 18.

The federal lawsuit — the second suit filed on behalf of family members of the Fairmount fire victims by the Kline & Specter law firm — is against the Philadelphia Housing Authority, the city’s Department of Human Services, and various officials of both agencies. Last year, the firm sued PHA and a California-based lighter company for negligence in Philadelphia Municipal Court.

The second suit alleges that the housing authority knew the 1,600-square-foot four-bedroom unit on North 23rd Street was overcrowded — 14 people lived inside — and unsafe, and that the agency did nothing to remedy that. It further alleges that the housing authority neglected — for years — to fix lifesaving safety features, including inoperable smoke detectors.

It is a damning portrait of willful failure on just about every level — and it should move Mayor Cherelle Parker to immediately hire the housing czar she pledged to appoint during her campaign to prioritize building affordable, and safe, housing.

There is no time to waste.

The fire that ravaged the home on Jan. 5, 2022, was one of the city’s deadliest in decades. It began after a 5-year-old boy playing with a lighter accidentally ignited a Christmas tree on the home’s second floor. Flames and smoke engulfed the unit with no warning.

The words of former Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Adam Thiel after the blaze still resound: Despite firefighters arriving within four minutes of the first call, he said, “Sometimes, we are too late.”

Too late — except it didn’t have to be.

The details outlined in the suit are nauseating: from PHA maintenance workers who removed the smoke detectors from the ceilings and walls six days before the fire after failed attempts to fix them (and then falsely reported them as working) to a DHS social worker who, two weeks before the fire, knew the smoke detectors weren’t working — even with batteries — and told the family she’d come back with working equipment. She never returned.

The Philadelphia Housing Authority, the lawsuit states, “knew of the grave risks associated with overcrowding, fire hazards and the lack of operable smoke detectors, and the serious dangers that the conditions posed” to the extended family who repeatedly requested to be moved to a larger unit.

And yet, following the fire in 2022, PHA president and CEO Kelvin Jeremiah said the housing authority doesn’t “kick out family members ... who might not have other suitable housing options” — a policy that would have sounded more benevolent if it didn’t put the lives of the city’s most vulnerable at risk.

Jeremiah had also been quick to say that all smoke detectors were working properly when the property was last inspected in May of the previous year, a claim that becomes nearly impossible to imagine is accurate given the years of failing inspections and safety visits that cited “deplorable and unsafe living conditions,” including rodent and bug infestations.

In 2015 and then again in 2017, the unit received a score of zero during inspections. “There were so many deductions,” the lawsuit reads, that it would have received “a negative score if such a score was possible.” Nothing suggests conditions improved, as the expanding family repeatedly requested to move.

What’s not hard to imagine is just how many other families in the nation’s poorest big city are likely living under similar conditions — and who and what else is falling through the cracks in a city with a chronic housing crisis.

After the fire, I thought a lot about the 5-year-old boy and other surviving family members. Even in a city that experiences countless casualties, the loss of life that morning was stunning.

I wondered how the little boy was doing; I urged the city to wrap our collective arms around a child in need of our care and compassion.

I’ve since heard that the little boy has received counseling. I can only hope that it’s helpful and ongoing. Last year, the city unveiled a memorial to the 12 family members killed in the fire, paying tribute through photos and poems.

Perhaps it will bring some peace to the family. Perhaps, too, it can help serve as a lasting reminder of what can happen when the safety nets meant to help people with the fewest resources instead fail them.

But the only proper way to pay tribute to the fire victims, and so many other families living in similar circumstances, is to prioritize the safety and well-being of all families who deserve — at the very least — a safe place to call home.