In the years the Lorraine Apartments building was owned by Daniel Gattineri and Gary Raso, required inspections of the 20 apartments were few and far between.
The law requires the city Health Department to inspect units as they change hands to certify they are habitable.
City directories indicate that between the purchase of the building by Gattineri and Raso in 1999 and the fire that destroyed the building last month, there have been at least 35 changes of occupancy. But only seven inspections were conducted in that time, according to the city health director, Jack Vondras.
All but two of the seven were done at the behest of the Gloucester Housing Authority, which was using federal Section 8 vouchers as rent subsidies to help clients remain in the Lorraine. The federal government requires inspections as a subsidy precondition.
The city requires building owners to inform the Health Department when apartments are changing hands. But compliance is spotty at best, said Vondras and public health sanitarian Max Schenk.
The failure of owners to bring about the required inspection of units in transition is more the rule than the exception, according to the health officials.
Health Department inspections look into many mundane details of apartment living - the presence of two clear means of egress, passable corridors, functional plumbing, lighting, heating, cooling and ventilation.
"They also cross into safety areas," Vondras said.
As examples, he cited cross-wiring between apartments, the use of portable or space heaters in place of or as a supplement to inadequate building heat and "hoarding" - the practice of people who compulsively fill a home or apartment to excess, often with flammable materials such as newspapers.
The law gives the Health Department wide latitude to probe deeply and act quickly when dangerous problems are discovered. Vondras cited "portable heaters" and hoarding as examples.
To deal with hoarding, a practice typical of some older people or people with mental health problems, may require the assembly of coordinated teams, Vondras said.
Chilly apartments
On Dec. 4, 10 days before the fire that destroyed the Lorraine, killing tenant Robert Taylor and leveling the adjacent Temple Ahavat Achim, the Board of Health responded to a complaint from tenant Anne Burton about the lack of heat in her apartment, which had led her to begin using a space heater.
Inspector Chris Sargent went to the Lorraine. In his report, Sargent wrote that the temperature in Burton's apartment was 48 degrees - a violation of the state Sanitary Code, which requires owners to provide enough heat to keep nighttime temperatures at 64 degrees and daytime temperatures at 68.
Sargent's report confirms Burton's complaint that the owners were running the heating system for two hours at night and two hours during the day.
After what the department terms a "nuisance" inspection, said Schenk, "they did change the policy."
Burton told the Times she believed others were also using space heaters.
In practice, the health inspectors work in tandem with the building inspectors.
"They do habitable stuff, more detailed inspections; we do structural stuff," said Building Inspector William Sanborn. "They'll contact us and we'll contact them."
In the 98-year-old Lorraine, where the fire started late Dec. 14 and which burned to the ground Dec. 15, neither the health nor the building inspector had much to go on.
On Dec. 21, the Times reported that despite widespread concern among firefighters that the four-story, wood-frame building across from Central Station was a firetrap, the Lorraine was more than three years overdue for a safety inspection and did not have an occupancy permit.
On Dec. 31, tenant Shanna Schulze sued Gattineri and Raso for $1.1 million in compensatory damages plus punitive damages to be set by a jury. Schulze charged that the owners had deceived her into signing a lease last May by concealing from her the building's lack of inspection or occupancy permit.
City records show that in 2004, the owners were informed by letter they should contact the city to arrange a full inspection as required by the state Building Code for what Sanborn described as "life and safety issues" - such as the absence of fire extinguishers or electrical wiring.
Sanborn said there is no record that the inspection was scheduled or conducted, nor was there any record of resolution of a 2006 complaint that an egress was blocked.
Staff cutbacks
Sanborn said the city's ability to conduct the required safety inspections was compromised by the shrinking size of the department during the recession years from 2002 on. There were three inspectors in 2004, but now there is only one - Sanborn himself.
Vondras, the health director, also points to cutbacks in his team of inspectors, from five in 2002 to the current three. One of the three is Sargent, who responded to the complaint from Anne Burton before the Lorraine fire.
Sargent had been the supervisor of inspectors, but after budget cuts eliminated his position, he took an inspector's position.
In the absence of widespread cooperation from apartment owners, the inspectors scrutinize classified newspaper ads for apartments, process tips and gossip in the effort to stay on top of their assignments to inspect apartments before they turn over.
"Not very successfully," conceded Vondras. He described the cutbacks as "false economy" because each scheduled inspection brings a $90 fee, charged to the property owner. Follow-up visits bring $50 fees.
Vondras said the health inspection system actually is a profit center for the city.
The city has 4,633 apartment units "that we know of," said Vondras. "There can be multiple unknown units" that are rented illegally outside the city's inspection and permitting system.
In the 12 months from April 2006 through April 2007, Vondras said, the Health Department did 223 inspections of rental dwellings in transition between tenants.
The department also responded to 309 "nuisance" calls - similar to the one that brought the inspector to the Lorraine in response to the complaint about the lack of heat - and did 167 reinspections.
Vondras said with the reduced staff, the Health Department is limited to a "crisis workload," which includes calls similar to the one from Anne Burton.
"We're dealing with the most egregious problems - no heat in the winter, life and death problems," said Vondras. "It would be nice to do apartment inspections, but we have no staff to do that."
