While Rumford selectmen deserve credit for holding landlords accountable for their properties’ failure to comply with life safety codes, evicting tenants until landlords comply is too much to demand.

If fear for tenant safety was so great, selectmen should have ordered an immediate evacuation of properties and provided relocation assistance. With their 30-day-to-vacate orders of Oct. 2, however, selectman indicated that a threat to safety is present, but not serious enough for swift action.

This gave tenants only a weak reason to move. Little wonder, then, that most are staying in defiance of the order.

Either a building is unsafe or it isn’t. Either this issue is about tenant safety or the town’s liability. Safety concerns should force tenants to seek new accommodations without delay. Liability concerns should not make families find new homes on the brink of winter.

Especially when there’s no guarantee their next house is safer than they one they’re ordered to vacate.

Many communities face Rumford’s problem: Remedying modern safety codes against an aging housing stock. This is maybe the most difficult, but unmentioned, problem facing Maine’s service centers.

Cost of compliance is prohibitive; cost of noncompliance is equally dear in terms of human life. Striking a balance between the two is particularly difficult. Rumford should be commended for even addressing the topic.

Too many communities do not, although they should.

But the town went too far by forcing evictions. Absent an immediate danger – which would have required the immediate evacuation of dangerous properties – the town must let the tenants remain, while pressuring landlords to make life safety improvements.