wygent wrote: ". If the answers were as simple as you suggest, they would have been implemented long ago.."
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The answers are claimed to be "not simple" because the landlords have more resources to spend on donations to politicians and to hire lobbyists than low and fixed income renters. What is doable has little to do with the costs of the retrofit which could easily be covered by current low income "market rate" rents.  It's all about profit wygent.  The competing political strands are profit and public good - it really is that simple.  Anybody can go back and read all the belly aching from landlords, nation wide, when smoke detectors became required; the same arguments you're making now were made then.