Anybody who knows anything about the mentally disabled knows a large percentage of them smoke incessantly, usually has a eating disordered, the care of them in their formative years are so negligent –how does smoking interact with their approved drugs. Haved you checked out their average life span.
So what you got is these disabled housed in horrible deficient quarters, we got a huge failure to enforce our fire codes –they got a mental deficiency that creates dysfunctional behavior like smoking in bed and on the couch.
Like I said, this isn’t Bush’s fault –it built up in the democratic years of Clinton. I hold the democrats more responsible than the republicans
Lets play make believe. Let’s say our country is led by a dictator, and we live in tyranny without our beautiful constitution. Say the care of the disabled and tumoiled children in this mythical tyranny was equivalent to what we have here today in our great country. I wonder what we would think of this dictator in relationship to the care of the disabled –I wonder what we would think of that nation system which that fueled such inhumanity.
So does democracy defuse accountability –is that the major short coming in how we play democracy in this country. Does it come down to we got freedom –but we have no systematic accountability in our system…….
So like our disabled friends, we have the freedom to smoke as we please –but we don’t have the intellectually ability and upbringing/ training to control our behaviors –we can’t understand of the horrible death toll and personal risk of a painful death. So, we have the freedom to self regulate ourselves, and we have the freedom to treat any segment of our collective society as we see fit -exspecially if they take money out of our pockets.
I wonder did they consider any special circumstances on the tobaco law suites with the particular problems of the disabled and smoking –shall we talk about all they time they mindlessly sit in front of the TV.
Rooming houses flirt with disasterBy BILL TORPY, CRAIG SCHNEIDERThe Atlanta Journal-
ConstitutionPublished on: 02/05/05
A fire that raged through a rooming house this week sent two men to the morgue and two others to the hospital.
It also brought to harsh light a nagging problem for Atlanta: the proliferation of illegal, unsafe boardinghouses.
JOHN SPINK/AJC STAFF
(ENLARGE)
Atlanta police Detective J. Morales and boardinghouse operator Lucy Dessesseau walk off to talk in front of the burned home where two residents died in a blaze this week.
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Residents and officials complain that such dwellings operate below the radar of the city government and endanger people by clustering drug addicts, alcoholics and unstable people under one roof.
They also acknowledge that a shortage of affordable housing in Atlanta makes operating such houses profitable.
The northwest Atlanta rooming house that burned, according to the woman who ran it, was a haven for eight men, most with mental and physical problems — a place that sheltered society's castoffs and kept them off the streets.
For $400 a month, the men got a room in a rundown cinder-block duplex. There was a padlock on the refrigerator — but no smoke detector.
Lucy Dessesseau, who started renting the duplex last April for about $600 a month, said a city zoning official told her she could sublet to six people on each side of the building.
"If I was doing anything illegal, the city would have told me," she said.
The men she rents to, she said, are "high functioning. They can take care of themselves."
She said she has known some of them for years. "I did good with them. They love me."
Citations issued
On Friday, Atlanta police cited Dessesseau for operating a boardinghouse without a permit and a business without a license.
Dessesseau acknowledged that the two-story dwelling on Akridge Street did not have a smoke detector when one of the boarders turned on the stove burners at 3 a.m. Wednesday and fell asleep. A pan of food caught fire, and the sleeping man and another resident died. Two more residents were injured, one critically.
After serving papers on Dessesseau, police went to the house next door, which also rents to a number of unrelated people. Terry Wilson was cited for operating an illegal rooming house.
City Councilman Ivory Young, whose district includes the two houses, contended the citations to Dessesseau were "a slap on the wrist."
"People died because of negligence," he said. "This is not over."
Neighborhoods in his district have a "huge number" of illegal dwellings that "are very difficult to monitor because from all appearances, they are single-family houses," the councilman said.
"We need a massive effort to address the condition and use of property, address by address in the city," Young said.
He said some property investors exploit the shortage of affordable housing in such areas and maximize their profit by subdividing the dwellings. "The investor sees an opportunity to rent out as many rooms as possible at the cost to the neighbors around it," the councilman said. "There's such a market for these types of houses that they are filled to the brim."
Accident waiting
Both of the Akridge Street homes cited Friday are owned by Gordon Irvine, who owns and manages about 100 properties. He said he knew Dessesseau was going to sublet the duplex, which he said he had not visited for a while.
Residents at the other home cited said there was a fire there last year after a resident left bagels in a toaster oven. No one was hurt. Debra Lurry, 53, who has lived there about six months, said the incident left her wary.
"I'm scared to go to sleep. I'm scared they'll burn it up in there," said Lurry, who pays $100 a week for a room there with her husband. She said the two-story home, which she said houses as many as nine people, has holes in the walls, burn marks near an electrical outlet and heating problems.
As for the fatal fire next door, she said, "I've been looking for this to happen."
Wilson complained he was being singled out by police. He said the practice he was cited for is occurring all over the neighborhood. "Why are you picking on this house?" he asked. Wilson pointed across the street and said, "There's one over there and there and there and there."
Makeda Johnson, who is chairwoman of a nearby neighborhood planning unit, said such dwellings "increase the transient population, they destabilize the community."
"How do they pay their rent? How do they get their money?" she asked. "The community becomes prey."
A city task force last year mapped the rooming and personal care homes that had permits. Data analyst James Henderson, an engineer with a Midtown tech company who worked as a volunteer with the task force, said he found 323 such homes, plus 114 homeless shelters, clustered throughout the northwest and south sides of Atlanta.
And those were "just the ones we know about," he said. The dwelling that burned and the one next door were not on the map, Henderson noted.
How many more are there?
"I don't know the answer to that question," he said. "That's the scary part. They come to light when they burn down."
'It's a pandemic'
Officials in the mayor's office, the building department and the code enforcement offices did not respond to repeated calls to answer questions about rooming houses.
Kline Driver, who renovated several such buildings in northwest Atlanta, said, "If the city cracked down they'd put thousands [of people] out on the streets. It's a pandemic down there."
Driver said the habits of residents in many of the dwellings, coupled with the crumbling facilities, make disasters inevitable. "It's a miracle we don't have 10 of these burning down a night," Driver said.
At the two houses cited Friday, at least 10 crimes have been reported to police in the last three years, including rape, aggravated assault and the selling of cocaine.
Johnson, the NPU chairwoman, said cracking down on such housing creates other problems.
"These must be shut down, but the problem is, where do these people go?" she asked. "It's a Catch-22. You can't just throw them out. They're going to end up on the street. They're going to end up under bridges."
Dessesseau took some of the survivors of the fire to a personal care home she runs nearby. That business, which is licensed by the state, was inspected a year ago by the Department of Human Resources and cited for having failed to conduct fire and disaster drills.
A last resort
On Friday, the burned home was surrounded by yellow crime scene tape. A stuffed animal and a cloth heart had been placed in the corner of a broken window.
Police have allowed Wilson to continue operating the rooming house next door, for the time being.
The residents there — a mix of people with mental and physical aliments, and people just struggling to get by — spoke of the troubles of the place, and possibly finding another place to live.
"I don't like rooming houses," said Clynette Creamer, 46. She and her husband were removing their belongings to go elsewhere.
She said one resident often kept two children at the house, a girl about 12 and a boy slightly younger. "I wouldn't want my kids here," she said.
Joseph Hill, 42, sat on the porch of the rooming house, nervously scratching his beard.
"Where am I going to go?" he asked.
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