Fire safety has made incredible strides in the years since most Cambridge homes were built. 

New multifamily buildings in Cambridge follow the extremely high standards required by modern international building and fire safety codes, making them much, much safer than older buildings. The Pew Research Center recently conducted a study concluding that, in addition to improving affordability and reducing homelessness, “modern multifamily housing has a fire death rate one-sixth the rate of single-family homes and multifamily housing built before 2000.”

Cambridge does not and cannot set its own building and fire safety codes. Those codes are set by the state, and state law preempts municipal ordinances. Massachusetts’ fire safety codes already include requirements for building separation and higher-rated fireproof materials for buildings based on distance from other buildings. Where state fire codes require a greater amount of building separation than local zoning, state rules govern.This is eminently sensible. Contrary to the argument in a recent op-ed, each of the 351 municipalities in Massachusetts should not bear the burden or expense of maintaining their own building and fire codes.

The best thing Cambridge could do for fire safety is replace older, less-safe buildings. From the use of building materials that can act as a fire accelerant to balloon frame construction to outdated and dangerous wiring to the lack of sprinklers or self-closing and fireproof doors, the many fire hazards of older buildings are very well known. Some of these known hazards could have played a role in the 2016 Wellington-Harrington fire and the recent fire in a nearly-100-year-old triple-decker on Roberts Road.

The City should also fund the replacement of outdated asphalt or “gasoline” siding with modern material that does not act as a fire accelerant. Such a program would benefit the residents of older buildings as well as their nearby neighbors. In my East Cambridge neighborhood, many existing buildings with these unsafe shingles are only a foot or two away from the residence next door, something modern building and fire safety codes would prevent in new construction. 

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Cambridge should also conduct regular inspections of older buildings for fire safety, particularly those that still have outdated electrical systems. Tenants of such buildings often fear bringing these issues to the attention of the City. Their landlord might retaliate against them by refusing to make other repairs, raising rent, declining to renew the lease, or even evicting them. Regularly-scheduled City inspections would avoid this dynamic. 

Cambridge’s Multifamily Housing ordinance has already led to proposals for more than 150 permanently affordable inclusionary homes, and the 100% Affordable Housing Overlay has more than 1,000 new affordable homes in the pipeline. All of these homes will meet our fire safety, environmental, and climate resiliency standards that are among the highest in the entire country.

As Cambridge’s own Senator Elizabeth Warren recently said upon passage of bipartisan federal housing legislation: What we need to do, for affordability as well as fire safety, is “Build More Housing!”

The writer is co-chair of A Better Cambridge, an all-volunteer nonprofit dedicated to housing affordability in Cambridge.

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