In Philadelphia, workers recently finished sifting through debris for victims’ personal items; Sean Benschop has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment; six lawsuits have been filed on behalf of injured parties; and a grand jury investigation is underway to fully understand the reasons behind the June 5th building collapse in Philadelphia that killed 6 and wounded 13.
There has been a range of responses from the public about the tragedy, and they demonstrate concern about larger issues facing Philadelphia and other major U.S. cities. The collapse brought focus to a city that lacks the resources to adequately fund such basic public services as Licenses and Inspections (L&I), not to mention education and transportation. The response also reveals a disconnect between the role of the government and people’s perception of that role when it comes to building safety. And as the Philadelphia building collapse shows, that disconnect can prove devastating.
The collapse occurred at 22nd and Market Street, a few blocks away from the city’s business district. At the time, a four-story building next to a one-story Salvation Army thrift store was being demolished. According to the city, the site was properly permitted, although the company hired to do the demolition did not notify the city when it began, as is protocol. In fact, it was recently revealed that Thomas J Simmonds Jr., property manager for the building’s owner, STB Investments Corp, knew of unsafe conditions and wanted the city to intervene in his dispute with the Salvation Army over cooperation in certain aspects of the demolition. The city did not, and Griffin Campbell, STB’s contractor, went ahead with the demolition and gutted the inside of the building rather than taking it apart brick by brick from the top. Without support on either side of the inside wall, it collapsed onto the Salvation Army store and those inside.
Afterwards, many Philadelphians came forward to say that they had called in to report what appeared to be unsafe conditions, though none of these warnings were headed. To add to the tragedy of the event, the L&I inspector who gave the permit and inspected the site committed suicide a week after the collapse.
Philadelphians tend to be quite opinionated, and the outcry following the collapse did not disappoint. To be sure, many agree that Sean Benschop, the operator of the excavator at the site, is partially to blame. He has been arrested and charged with involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment. STB and Griffin Campbell are widely viewed as partially at fault and are under investigation by a grand jury and facing a lawsuit by victims. Yet despite these measures, people continue to blame the government. Talk show host Dom Giordiano writes in an opinion piece: “Why did government not step in and stop this?”
The answer is the crux of the bind in which this city’s government is held. Simply put, people don’t like to pay taxes. Nevertheless, citizens still expect that the communities in which they live will provide certain public services, including public safety and security.
Two years ago, an abandoned warehouse fire in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia that killed two firefighters left City Hall promising “never again.” Philadelphia has an enormous problem with abandoned buildings and their tax delinquent owners, and the fire reminded Philadelphia of the risk that these building posed. After the warehouse burned down, Mayor Nutter promised increased L&I inspections and stricter standards. But dilapidated commercial and residential properties remain an issue. It’s difficult to entirely fault the city. Inspecting and sealing buildings is expensive, and for a city who just laid off more than 3,000 teachers, counselors, nurses and other workers, it’s all about deciding what is absolutely necessary and what can go.
Since 2006, City Controller Alan Butkovitz has been calling for increased funding for L&I, which, in 2011, had 39 inspectors to cover 93,103 inspections that year. The permitting process requires a visit before demolition occurs and after it is complete to make sure debris is properly dealt with – but nothing is required in between. A month after the collapse, Pat Gillespie, head of a Philadelphia building trades union, remarked that “the lack of oversight of demolition projects in Philadelphia should keep people up at night.”
So the question becomes this: What should the government have done differently? Should there be a law that no one with a criminal record (which Beschop had) can work in demolition? Should the permitting process be stricter? The site was properly permitted and apparently in compliance with those permits. Should taxes be increased in order to increase L&I staff? This would certainly be an unpopular move. Normally, these options would be shot down as ‘bad for business.’ In the wake of a tragic accident, however, Mayor Nutter and the city government were blamed for not doing enough.
It appears that there is a fundamental disconnect between how people perceive the government and what it actually does. Citizens don’t want to pay higher taxes or impose regulations, but then when the gaps in government capacity lead to disaster, we wonder where the government was and why it didn’t step in.
As a society, we like to create a staunch divide between public and private, and we tend to hail private enterprise as efficient. In Philadelphia, when the city orders a demolition project, the site is regularly inspected. When the project is privately ordered and run, as in the case of the recent collapse, there exists essentially no oversight beyond the permitting process. The explanation, according to L&I, is that the responsibility is left to the private sector to ensure safety, even though a private demolition project may take place in the public right-of-way. There is little economic incentive for a private enterprise to maintain public safety when its objective is to make a profit. And if people have the reasonable expectation that when they walk into a building that it won’t collapse, then it seems that the government should be responsible for ensuring the general safety and welfare of the public.
If people have these expectations from their city for goods and services that don’t generate profits, then they must understand that those services require revenue. There is a cultural reticence to relinquish those dollars because of the fear that they’re being used to fund someone else’s education, someone else’s pension. And at times they are, but public goods and services benefit everyone, directly and indirectly. The victims of the building collapse came from every socioeconomic strata. Funding L&I inspections isn’t only important if you live next to an abandoned warehouse; it matters for people who live and work anywhere in the city.
Even public expenditures, especially education, benefit those who don’t attend or work at public schools. As of 2009, an estimated 550,000 Philadelphians – over half of the adult population – are considered “low literate,” meaning they would struggle to fill out forms or follow written instruction. Low levels of literacy and education are linked to increased poverty and joblessness, making it difficult to find and maintain work. One study suggests that the cost of children growing up in poverty in the U.S., including the cost of lost earnings, propensity to commit crime and quality of health, amounts to about $500 billion per year, nearly four percent of GDP. These costs affect everyone, not just those who live in poverty.
It comes down to this: What kind of society do we want to live in? Do you want paved roads, safe buildings, clean air? Even if you believe that anyone can reach their full economic potential if they try hard enough – systemic causes of poverty aside – that requires a functional public education system good enough to give them that shot. Having a vibrant private sector and a strong public sector are not mutually exclusive, especially since quasi-public goods like education and infrastructure are essential to building a strong business climate.
Without oversight to ensure public safety, the demolition site in Philadelphia was set to spend $10,000 on a job that should have cost more than ten times that amount and failed to use industry best-practices. Because private enterprise doesn’t exist in a vacuum, there needs to be some consideration of the public interest so that tragic accidents like the collapse don’t happen again. Tax-weary citizens – not only in Philadelphia, but across America – need to learn and accept that the benefits they expect require tax dollars to live up to those expectations. That is, of course, unless we want our public sector values to become a demolition zone.
This is especially interesting in Philadelphia given the scarcely-reported dimension in the public education crisis that is schools’ physical conditions. Many of the schools being closed this fall are facing all-time lows in enrollment, yes, but are also housed in almost dilapidated buildings that would necessitate closure in the near future for repairs anyway. Last fall, before the district’s funding crisis became increasingly pressing, if you had asked Philadelphia parents what their biggest concern was about their children’s schools, the number one answer was their physical safety. What does it say about the state of Philly’s inspections system if the too-real possibility of a wall collapsing into their child’s classroom was of more concern to parents than the downward-spiralling quality of the education offered?