As usual, landlords foot bill while Pols reap the benefits.

In the past few weeks, two tragedies occurred that will ultimately result in costing all owners money. With the fire-related deaths that happened in both a city-owned Brooklyn building and a Manhattan high-rise, new mechanical systems may be mandated for every residential owner. If this occurs, it will be more nonsense in a city of mandated nonsense.

Preventing needless death and injury is indeed a good thing, not a bad one. Unfortunately, the Mayor and Council will see to it that the small owner is treated as if they were the same as the big fellows. To the politicians, it won't matter if your building is a walk-up or a 60-story luxury cloud buster. New systems and upgrades are in our future. Whether those new costly systems will prevent death won't matter to the powers that be; they will have done something to enhance their next election campaign.

The problem with equating the two buildings where the recent fires occurred and 99 percent of our housing stock is that they are not similar. If costly mandated sprinkler or other fire safety related upgrades are going to be required in all residential buildings due to these two examples, we will be needlessly spending millions of dollars. Spending our money for the pols to show the people that they have corrected a wrong - a problem that actually only existed in a minute portion of our housing stock.

First of all, let's remember for a minute, one of these fires was in a building that did have sprinklers. Unfortunately, the sprinklers weren't working. In a city-owned and operated building where there were at least three employees who had licenses to operate and maintain the system, no one bothered to do so. Yet because the city could not operate a building safely, the private sector somehow is to blame.

In the high-rise instance, it was not fire that killed anyone. In the apartment where the fire occurred, the door was chocked open, which allowed smoke to filter into the hallways instead of being contained at the source. Other residents of the building instead of staying in their apartments - tried to flee, which resulted in their deaths from smoke inhalation.

Each of these buildings is not the typical New Yorker's home. Then why should the small landlord have to pay? The answer, of course, is simply that when a scapegoat is needed, look to the owner of property to be the evil, uncaring, greedy caricature that the citizenry' love to hate. All owners, whether they are the largest or the smallest, are seen in the same light.

For some reason, the American people don't want to accept that in life things go wrong. To illustrate the point, all you have to do is remember the last time your boiler was turned off while undergoing service in the middle of the day. I'm sure you got at least one phone call threatening you with a rent strike for not providing steam. It doesn't matter that there was heat and hot water for 364 of the last 365 days - life should be perfect.

We, as Americans, are raised to believe that nothing should ever go wrong. We are told that eventually we will succumb to death, but somehow every person's passing will occur without trauma or illness. The great reward occurs after a sweet dream, but before waking. No one should suffer, ever. When they do, it is someone else's fault, and that someone should pay.

So instead of examining the problem carefully, our politicians have taught us to react without thought. Asbestos causes cancer in people mining it for 40 years, then let us spend billions ripping it out of buildings where no one ever is exposed to it. A person dies in the operating room, then the surgeon or nurse or drug manufacturer was responsible, not the illness. Smoke cigarettes for 40 years and contract lung cancer, then it wasn't your fault that death won't come peacefully. Someone else is to blame. It is the American way.

Some things can be prevented and should be. A logical and reasonable argument can be made for installing sprinklers in all of the behemoth residential towers that were built in the last few years. Perhaps the laws should change to have all buildings being constructed in the future to have sprinkler systems, regardless of height. But it is not reasonable to expect owner's of existing rent-regulated buildings to spend money on sprinkler systems. Not everything that could be tragic or unpleasant in the world can be avoided.