Construction Maison

Every metropolitan area in the nation is racially segregated, and Los Angeles is no exception. We tolerate residential segregation because we’re convinced that it happened informally — because of personal choices and private discrimination. But what cemented our separate neighborhoods is something most of us have forgotten — government’s unconstitutional and systematic insistence on segregated housing in the mid-20th century, establishing patterns that persist to this day. The 2010 census data show that 60% of Los Angeles’s African Americans live in neighborhoods where few whites are present. The exposure of blacks to whites is as minimal as it is in Chicago or Newark; concentrated African American poverty is as common in L.A. as in New York or Pittsburgh. The New Deal created the nation’s first civilian public housing in the 1930s, segregated not only in the South, but nationwide. In his autobiography, the African American poet Langston Hughes recounted his adolescence in Worl...

In January 2015, a massive fire in Edgewater, N.J., demonstrated that buildings with sprinkler systems are not always protected against fire. The blaze destroyed 240 residential apartments and displaced 500 people from the Edgewater Avalon apartment building . The fire began when a maintenance worker’s plumbing torch accidentally ignited wooden wall studs , and flames quickly spread throughout the structure. Fifteen minutes passed before workers called the fire department . In that time, the fire spread throughout combustible void spaces (between walls and floors) and soon engulfed the building. Emergency personnel from 35 different cities and towns ultimately responded to the incident. Thankfully, there were no fatalities. Immediately after the blaze, people asked why the fire was so devastating. The building had sprinklers, after all. Shouldn’t the sprinkler system have extinguished the fire? To make matters worse , this building had already burned down 15 years prior during i...

AMHERST — A large apartment complex proposed for Route 9 at the Amherst- Hadley town line continues to move through the permitting processes in both communities, even as some residents express worry about the size of the project and how it could impact their neighborhood. Amherst Planning Director Christine Brestrup said people have raised several issues with the 131- apartment Aspen Heights residential community in both written comments and orally at a Zoning Board of Appeals hearing earlier this month. One of the most prominent concerns, Brestrup said, is whether people who live at the proposed complex , to be built at 408 Northampton Road, will drive through the Greenleaves Retirement Community and Windfield Family and Senior Estates. Because Northampton Road is a divided highway, those living at Aspen Heights will have to exit the complex by taking a right, heading east, Brestrup said. To travel west toward the shopping malls, the roads through Greenleaves and Windfield migh...