How the Devastating Oakland Fire Represents a National Epidemic We Should All Care About

The two-story warehouse was made almost entirely from wood, including wooden furniture and a makeshift, single-file wooden staircase. Tapestries, antiques, Hindu god statues, and instruments lined the walls. Many called it a bohemian maze, others, a tinderbox. The fire that broke out here in Oakland, CA, on Friday that killed 36 people is a tragedy for the community, but it's also symptomatic of a national endemic: lack of affordable housing.

Known as the Ghost Ship, the warehouse that burned amid a dance party was home to about 20 artists who could not afford the Bay Area's rent prices, according to the Los Angeles Times. As the average cost of rent and living exponentially rises across the United States, the Bay Area is undeniably the epicenter of the crisis. The issue is complex, but one root cause of the Bay's housing disaster is its booming tech industry made up of powerful giants like Google and Facebook. For many residents of this area, finding a place to live is not a question of safety — but a question of simply wanting to sleep with a roof over their head.

The Ghost Ship was only zoned for industrial use; residency was illegal. The tenant of the space, Derick Ion, lived there with his children — along with other artists whom he rented the space to illegally; Ion did not own the building, but was renting it as an industrial space from Chor Ng. Before the fire, the city officials repeatedly cited the building for code violations. At one point last year, child protective services removed Ion's three children from his custody because the space was unsafe for children. According to multiple reports, a majority of the casualties resulted from the lack of exits on a poorly constructed second floor that was made out of wood palettes. It's unclear who, if anyone, will be culpable for the fire and its casualties, but the city has opened a criminal investigation.

Considering that the average cost of an apartment (number of bedrooms notwithstanding) in Oakland is $2,959, it's unsurprising that so many artists turned to living spaces that are not necessarily built for residents. For comparison, one resident of the Ghost Ship told the Wall Street Journal that he paid $565 a month to live in the space.

The average cost of an apartment in San Francisco, an astronomical $3,595, is clearly the most crippling contribution to the Bay's lack of affordable housing; it is the highest average rent in the country. Communities such as the Ghost Ship are an apparent reaction to skyrocketing rent in an area where seven million people live. But it's not just the Bay: rental prices across America have been steadily rising since 2000; between 2014 and 2015, rent prices were up four percent nationally.

One group in Oakland fighting the rising cost of living is Causa Justa. After the fire, Causa Justa's Executive Director Maria Poblet released a statement relating the need for affordable housing to the tragedy. POPSUGAR reached out to Causa Justa and a representative reiterated Poblet's sentiment.

"In a gentrifying city with the fourth highest rents in the country, making do in unsafe housing is a choice people make," Poblet wrote, "in order to stay in the city, in order to retain their creative and community networks, in order to make art for a living."

A choice between safety and affordability should not be a decision anyone is forced to make. So what's the path forward? One of the main problems with evicting people from warehouse spaces that are not permitted for residents, like the Ghost Ship, is that it can lead to more unaffordable housing to be built.

As reported by The Guardian, when a city, like Oakland, deems a live-work space uninhabitable, "it can create a pathway for real-estate developers to remove a low-income arts community and replace it with more profitable, market-rate housing."

Instead, as Causa Justa emphasizes, city officials must find a solution where residents are not forced onto the street and can live in a work-live space safely. It should be possible to improve live-work warehouses so that they are up to code for the basic safety of their residents. Smoke detectors should not be a luxury (the Ghost Ship reportedly did not have sprinklers or working smoke detectors).

If a legal path is not forged to ensure work-live spaces are safe, then an entire community of artists is at risk. The Ghost Ship is sadly not the first live-work space to catch on fire: in 2015, a warehouse housing dozens of residents burned down in Oakland, killing two, because the building was not up to code. While the 2015 fire occurred at a space that permitted residents, it displaced many people who lived there for years paying below-market rent. In Portland, OR, artists are encountering the same evictions. One building's story is emblematic of the same issue: a warehouse space was purchased by a developer, legal tenants were evicted with 60 days' notice, and it was difficult for them to relocate since the average rent price in Portland, OR, was up 12 percent in one year.

Artists are invaluable members of any community, but access to affordable housing is crucial to maintaining those thriving networks in any city. In an op-ed for KQED Arts about the fire, Gabe Meline summarized what is at stake in closing these communities. "For the tormented queer, the bullied punk, the beaten trans, the spat-upon white trash, the disenfranchised immigrants and young people of color," he wrote, "these spaces are a haven of understanding in a world that doesn't understand."

On top of being affordable, these makeshift homes are also makeshift families. Condemning such spaces, often to invite development, rather than finding solutions will propel vibrancy out a city known for its arts — and they may never be able to come back.