The victims died because they were trapped in a tinderbox. Yet the economic backdrop of the tragedy is also important because it shows how rising rents and fears of eviction can push vulnerable people in a desperate search for housing to unsafe spaces.

Oakland’s housing prices have always fluctuated with Bay Area booms and busts, and complaints about gentrification were part of the 1990s dot-com boom here as well. The effects are more pronounced this time around because as tech companies have migrated closer to San Francisco from places like Palo Alto and Mountain View, Oakland has been pulled deeper into Silicon Valley’s orbit. Uber, the ride-hailing service now valued at almost $70 billion, plans to open an office in downtown Oakland in the next year or so.

This crisis isn’t limited to the Bay Area. Across the country, and especially in expensive cities like New York and Seattle, urban areas have been flooded with high-paid tech and finance workers who have pushed up rents. Blue-collar workers and families have been displaced to cheaper housing on the fringe, but many creative types have made do by finding alternative living arrangements like industrial property, recreational vehicles and even boats.

In Oakland, where for decades warehouses have served as a haven for artists, this often means living at the whims of any landlord willing to look the other way.

“There’s a kind of unholy alliance in which these buildings are leased with a ‘nod nod, wink wink, nobody lives there,’ ” said Thomas Dolan, an Oakland architect who specializes in live/work spaces and helps building owners convert illegally occupied warehouses into legally occupied lofts. “It’s a precarious situation where tenants exchange cheap rent for substandard housing — and if they rock the boat, they’re out.”