PORTLAND, Maine - Portland area landlords are meeting for the second time in two weeks tonight to talk about fire safety.
It's a subject at the forefront of many landlords' minds at the moment, following last month's fire in downtown Portland in which six young people died in an early morning blaze at a rental property.
Addressing the crowd tonight will be real estate lawyer Peter Van Hemel. The area of concern in Portland, he says, is the number of old residential buildings which are not required to meet modern fire code requirements.
Looking ahead, Van Hemel predicts landlords will have to deal with more and more requests from tenants to make these old properties safer. "And landlords are going to try to meet that with the supply" - which is going to cost the landlords money, he says, as older buildings would have to meet stricter standards.
He says landlords will want to be offered some kind of financial incentive by the city to do this, such as tax breaks.
