It's the law, but who's going to enforce it?

The Township Council was slated to adopt an ordinance Tuesday that would provide stricter guidelines to enforce occupancy limits in rental houses.

Council members said this is a safety issue, and it is. Overcrowded rental units can and have become death traps when wall-to-wall mattresses are lined up in an attic or the electrical wire for a hot plate is run under a rug because there's no kitchen in a haphazardly constructed rental unit.

But there seems to be some confusion about who's going to enforce this law.

Construction Official Daniel F. Newman Jr. said his understanding was that the ordinance would allow police to issue summonses to tenants in overcrowded dwellings, although the police are the police and can enforce any township law but usually leave code enforcement to code enforcement officials.

Newman said code enforcers don't work at night. When the police get called out on a noise complaint or domestic violence call and see a certificate of occupancy (CO) stating there are four people allowed in a unit and there are seven sleeping there, the cops can issue a summons on the spot.

Currently a CO doesn't list the maximum number of tenants allowed in a unit, Newman said.

The new ordinance states "at any time that an official or employee of the Township of Brick, including the construction official, code enforcement officer or police officer of the Township of Brick has reason to believe that any rental unit is in violation of this chapter, the landlord and/or tenants may be issued a summons or violation of the provisions of this chapter."

But Councilman Stephen C. Acropolis said it would be Zoning Officer Sean Kinnevy who would now issue summonses for overcrowding, not police.

"Many people living in one house is a zoning violation," Acropolis said. "The police probably wouldn't issue a summons."

He said when the police department goes out on a complaint call and sees that there may be more than the allowed number of tenants living in a rental, the police would send the report to zoning.

But Kinnevy said he hasn't seen the ordinance except to read about it in a local newspaper.

"It doesn't involve zoning at all," he said.

Kinnevy said the township's division of inspection enforces the housing code, something code enforcers already do.

The one man who everyone is sure is the one whose job it is to enforce this ordinance, Brick code enforcer Donald Forgione, is also a landlord who received a warning in 2005 for overcrowding in a multifamily dwelling, according to a violation report from Freehold Borough's code enforcement office.

An ordinance becomes law 21 days after it is published in the newspaper. It would seem to make sense that some type of communication between the departments would have occurred before this law was adopted, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Let's hope the next three weeks are rich in communication among departments about who does what with this amended law so that it does more than just sit in the code book.