Building a home that you know is unsafe is homicide!

Published on January 21, 2006 By momijiki In Current Events

I seriously believe that if you build a home for others that is unsafe is homicide.

Recently in Tokyo, it was discovered that a series of apartment complexes that were sold do not meet earthquake safety standards. These buildings are only able to sustain half the earthquake damage that they are supposed to. How do these people sleep at night? Being that Japan is particularly earthquake prone (the thinking is a bit more "when" an earthquake happens not "if") If Tokyo were to have an earthquake as big as the Hanshin earthquake in 95 then these buildings would collapse completely killing everyone inside.

I know that the axe isn't going to fall right away, and maybe, just maybe never would.... but how do you sleep at night knowing that your greedy heart is putting people in danger.

Aside from the physical danger, the Tokyo government has told the residents that they can not live there as it does't meet safety standards. Financially, these people have just lost their house and many of them will likely go bankrupt as there is no financial compensation in sight for them at this time.

The overwhelming majority of these people still have 30 year mortgages to pay on a place that they can't live in, and now have to pay rent on top of that.

Lots of finger pointing about who is ultimately responsible. The designer, Aneha, is getting a lot of the blame since he made the designs and reported them as being sufficient when he knew that they weren't. The builders are also being blamed as they built it and apparantly used watered down concrete as well. The real-estate agents are also being blamed as they apparantly knew about it.

Lots of finger pointing and denial.
Still, they shouldn't just be charged with fraud. They were putting people in real danger. I think they should be charged with homicide. Not something that can be hidden by folding your old company (Sorry, can't get any money from us thieves since we've folded/declared bankruptcy) and starting a new one. Charge them so that other companies/criminals who think that they can make money by endandgering people will think twice about it.
I"m so glad I didn't convince my husband that we should try to buy instead of rent (ultimately it wasn't a financial reality) but anything we could have afforded was probably done with that same cheap construction and cheating practices.

Argh!

What can you trust these days!????? here's a link to the japan times where you can get one of the stories. Link

Comments

momijiki

on Jan 21, 2006

Here is another link that shows that the condos were sold while knowing they were not sound!!!!

Link

Dr Guy

on Jan 21, 2006

That they did indicates they can sleep at night. The world is made up of wonderful people. And immoral ones as well.

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