Dave Carlson wrote:
I agree they shouldn't have to - but they would be compelled to because of a larger problem (the zoning laws). In a non-family, R1-R3 can have up to three people, and with a family, up to five. Is there some good reason I'm missing why it shouldn't just be a flat number?During the late 80s and early 90s, when CCP/SAFE was young and frisky, occupancy rules were used as a way to get gang houses emptied. I lived in the 3000 block of Portland then and the house next door to me, where the local Rolling 30s Bloods was formed and hung out, had 37 people, including 5 children, living in a triplex (2-2 bedrm units, 1-1 bedrm unit).
(Ah, the "good old days." May they stop haunting our dreams in the near future.)
Students are apparently viewed in somewhat the same light as gang bangers. The similarities might be overcrowding, loud parties, poor policing of trash and garbage, drunk and disorderly....
The numbers are purely arbitrary and most likely reflect the needs of those who spoke to the council persons or aldermen of the time it was written/last amended.
I do think that occupancy rules are frequently honored in the breach, but do not come to the attention of Inspections so long as the occupants are quiet, tidy, and more or less regular in their habits, probably because the numbers are arbitrary. There is also the cultural habit, used for centuries, of having big families in small houses, so long as they are related. Parents, a grandparent (sister, brother, uncle) and ten kids in a six or seven room house was unremarkable.
The fault in the code is requiring blood and family ties in describing the arbitrary numbers embedded in the code. (I believe it says something like 'no more than 4 unrelated persons in a unit'.) The city has no legitimate interest, other than custom and a more than small tendency toward puritan tribalism, for describing the parameters of a legitimate household. The city could argue a legitimate reason for asking how many are children in a household of x persons in terms of fire code compliance.
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