Restrictive City Codes

[Kevin]

My school is located in what most people would call a very yuppie community. The city has many codes that make it difficult for us to operate a small house before before building our own.

We are currently limited to 3 residents according to the local fire marshal because:

1. We don't have a sprinkler system
1a. The neighborhood doesn't have the water pressure to support one so we'd have to generate our own water pressuer for the system somehow.
2. Walls aren't sheetrocked
3. Doors aren't self-closing
4. Do not have fire escapes from EVERY room
5. Residence part of house is not seperated from common area by a lockable door.
6. Stove is not covered by a vent hood
7. We don't have all the wiring in the house going to one central closet.

Essentially they tried to do away with rent houses with our city fire code (rent houses must do bad things to people's property values). Unfortunately, we are forced to comply with this and it has really restricted us financially. Has anyone else out there had any difficulties with restrictive city codes? Is there a good catch-all way to overcome them?

[OnePlus69Is70]

Massachusetts state building codes require all of that, and have for 15 years. On top of which, most townships have laws limiting the number of unrelated people who can live together- in Amherst, it's 4. But our house has a variance, because it was already a fraternity when that went into affect. Still, we have to jump through hoops. Generally, what the inspector does with us, is he gives us a list of things he wants done by the next time he comes- we call it the 30-day list. That way we can get things done in stages, rather than bankrupt ourselves all at once. You might be able to work something like that, if you have a good relationship.

If you have a good lawyer, you might try getting yourself set as a 'family unit'. Most places allow groups that live together for a common purpose (a la nuns) to count as a family for zoning purposes. I realize you're hardly running a convent, but it's worth a shot.

Some advice on your specific problems:
1) We have a sprinkler system, and have since 1977, with its own pump because Amherst doesn't have enough pressure to make ours work on its own. We just had to have the compressor replaced to the tune of $1400. If our sprinklers don't work, the house is closed, no exceptions. There's really no way to get around that one- just get a good company who will come back for repairs, and pay them well.

2) Sheetrock can be done yourself, it's easy once you get the hang of it. Go to the Home Depot or whatever you have there about 30 minutes before they close, and you can probably get a deal on irregular shaped pieces left over from the day. Once you've got the walls done, the hard part is keeping them up- our walls have a hundred fist, foot, and head shaped holes. The way to keep up with it is to cover the holes with bonding tape and then paint over- we do that until a wall is more hole than wall, then we replace. If you need help with exactly how to do the repair, I can explain it. The reason they require it is because plaster will burn through in two seconds, but sheetrock will give you a couple minutes.

3) Spring hinges are cheap. Right now we only have to have our fire doors self-closing, but for next year we have to convert all our doors. What we do with the fire doors is close them for inspection, stop them open the rest of the time. Stupid, but it works.

4) What exactly do you have to put up? Some of our houses have real fire-escapes, with stairs, but we just have steel ladders coming down from every window. I'm betting if they're requiring that, your windows will also have to be of a required size for people to get out of them- the one in my room is extra wide. We have a room on the third floor that has to stay locked all the time (by which we mean "when the inspector comes") because it lacks a window large enough to climb out of, and it doesn't meet the health codes for sunlight and air.

5) This one is funky, I'm not sure how you're going to work it. Does it count if the bedrooms just have door locks? What exactly do they want? Our common area is two rooms on the first, and the basement. We have three bedrooms on the first- two of them have their own doors to the outside, and the third has an entrance with a vestibule which is off the common area, so it's separated. The vestibule was created with a really big piece of sheetrock.

6) We only have to have the hood if it's a gas stove, not for electric- that's why we switched. Is yours the same?

7) You're just going to have to hire an electrician. We have three boxes, but the two extras are wired to breakers on the main one. If you think that's bad- MA has a new code, all low-voltage wiring (telephone, cable, computer network) must be installed by electricians. Ugh.

If you need any more specific advice, just e-mail jfossell@student.umass.edu. Living in Massachusetts, you learn to deal with stupid government.

[Kevin]

I knew we couldn't be alone

Currently we're renting our house so most of these changes won't happen until we purchase the property (which is in the works because the location can't be beat).

Those ideas are actually great. Our attornies will love to play with the 'family unit' idea. That's a great idea. Yeah our community is 3 or more and you're in the same category as an apartment complex (and the city has come up with all kinds of S**T to discourage apartment complexes (they lower property value unless they're high-class apartments)..

Thanks for the help on this stuff I'll actually talk to our housing corp about some of this stuff.

Sad to have a house that can sleep so many but can only have 3 in there!

[DeltAlum]

Some of these things are hard to understand -- like the locking doors, but, honestly, the rest of them are for your safety, and with the number of fraternity and sorority fires we've had in the past few years, they're really a good idea -- even if they're a pain in the uh....tush.

[OnePlus69Is70]

DeltAlum, I'd agree if I thought any of the codes were meant to improve our safety. But I know better. Last year the DU house burnt down. Town meeting took it as an excuse to tighten the noose- we're all reeling under the code changes, not a single one of which would have prevented the fire. And now they're dragging us in front of the county housing court if we violate code. This is the one time in my life I've been willing to give into the 'they're out to get us' mentality- they really are!

Here's a charming anecdote- our darling neighbors (who all live in former Greek housing- we're the last house left on the original row) decided to try to drive us out. First they offered our landlords $250,000 cash for the house- which is easily worth 2 million. Then they made constant calls to the town inspector to try to close us. And when our sprinkler system went, they payed off our company not to come- we've no physical proof of that, but I find most businessmen don't refuse big jobs outright, and the rumor has come from so many independant sources that they must have done something. Greeks really do get the short end of the stick, at least in Amherst.

[nauadpi]

I do have to say atleast you guys get houses. In my town, 5 or more women living in a house is considered a brothel. So existingly all the sororities and most of the fraternities all live in one dorm.

[OnePlus69Is70]

LOL, I've got a better one- MA law forbids us from having women overnight in our house- makes us a "house of ill-repute". They occaisonally enforce it, just for fun I think.

[SATX*APhi]

Originally posted by nauadpi
I do have to say atleast you guys get houses. In my town, 5 or more women living in a house is considered a brothel. So existingly all the sororities and most of the fraternities all live in one dorm.

We have the same "brothel" law. At least you all are lucky and have dorms. At my school sorority and fraternity members do not have designated dorms. Everyone lives in any random dorm or off-campus. It sucks!!

[SuperSister]

They have that law at my school too, what they do to get around it is label every room door with a letter or number and then they're registered as apartments (so a house is actually an apartment house) so while everyone lives in the house, they are technically living in apartments with common areas (like kitchen, bathrooms, chapter room)

[OnePlus69Is70]

That wouldn't work in Massachusetts- a "unit" is defined as bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen- if it's missing any one of them, it's just a room. So Amherst rent law is no more than 4 people per bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen. There's a huge premium on houses that have variances to be Greek housing- there are only 16 of them, not enough to house every group.

[madmax]

Originally posted by DeltAlum
Some of these things are hard to understand -- like the locking doors, but, honestly, the rest of them are for your safety, and with the number of fraternity and sorority fires we've had in the past few years, they're really a good idea -- even if they're a pain in the uh....tush.

I think most town rules are just meant to harrass fraternities.

If the laws are truely for safety then why do most town's exempt themselves and families from the rules? How bout we make every single family home in town follow the same rules? It will be for their own safety right?

[OnePlus69Is70]

It's not just to bother fraternities. Most fraternity zoning codes are extensions of codes for apartment buildings, anti-slum laws. When you build a single family home, only your family really has to be concerned about the conditions- and if you're content to live in a gasoline-soaked grass hut, the authorities will let you. But it's different when you build a house and people other than yourself are going to live there- you don't have to care as much. Most places have two different sets of codes, one for owner-occupied buildings and one for everything else. It's the same with banks- interest rates are lower and terms are longer if the facility is owner occupied, because the bank assumes it will be better cared for.

[madmax]

Originally posted by OnePlus69Is70
It's not just to bother fraternities. Most fraternity zoning codes are extensions of codes for apartment buildings, anti-slum laws. When you build a single family home, only your family really has to be concerned about the conditions- and if you're content to live in a gasoline-soaked grass hut, the authorities will let you. But it's different when you build a house and people other than yourself are going to live there- you don't have to care as much. Most places have two different sets of codes, one for owner-occupied buildings and one for everything else. It's the same with banks- interest rates are lower and terms are longer if the facility is owner occupied, because the bank assumes it will be better cared for.

OK, then why dont to laws apply equally to hotels, motels, and dorms? They are not owner occupied.

It all comes down to towns passing 2 sets of rules . One for us and one for them.

[OnePlus69Is70]

In Massachusetts, the laws DO apply uniformly to hotels, fraternity houses, and dorms- all of which are defined under our law as 'lodging houses'. We all have the same fire codes and other regulations. The towns have the authority to determine which parts of town are what kind of zone, but the state defines the zones, and the state defines the building codes. The town can define a bunch of other regulations- how many people per bedroom, per unit, set back from the road, etc. but most of the authority is state-wide.

Our problem is the enforcement- we have overzealous local inspectors, who look for the tiniest code infractions. However, I can see their point of view too. The people of Amherst HATE fraternities- they hate college students in general, because we disrupt the normal flow of life, but it's the fraternities that send streams of drunken party-goers out into the streets three nights a week. Every child in Amherst grows up hearing fraternity as a four letter word. It's no wonder they elect inspectors who crawl up our a**es.

What state are you in? Maybe it's time you modernized your building codes down there.