Amended housing law enables police to aid code enforcers All renters will be required to post CO within 5 feet of front door BY COLLEEN LUTOLF Staff Writer "It's a safety issue." - Stephen Acropolis BRICK - An amended law would give police officers more power to issue citations for overcrowded apartments. The Township Council was expected to adopt Oct. 24 an amendment to the township's maintenance inspection standards for rentals. The impetus for the amendment, which was originally referred to by council members as an "animal house ordinance" is safety, council members said. "It's a safety issue," Council Vice President Stephen C. Acropolis said. "If you have 10 bikes on the front porch and there's seven cars on the yard, it's either a party going on or it's overcrowding. If it's overcrowding, it's not legal." The amended law would do two things: require a certificate of occupancy (CO) to list square footage of each room and the maximum number of allowed tenants who can live in the dwelling, and place more onus on police to enforce the property maintenance code, said Construction Official Daniel F. Newman Jr. Although occupancy standards have always been on the law books, "it's another way we can investigate," Newman said. "Our code official would show up at 1 o'clock in the afternoon when no one was home." But if police receive a call for a noise violation or domestic violence in the middle of the night when code enforcers aren't on duty, "police will have a right to cite [for overcrowding] because if they do look at the site they won't be guessing about the square footage," Newman said. "Do I think police will be knocking on doors checking occupancy? No. But if they find a house filled with people ... who are obviously staying there, [the police] have the authority to cite them. To me, that's a plus," he said. Prior to a construction code official granting a certificate of occupancy, a landlord would have to submit an application that lists the square-foot dimensions of each room in the dwelling and the name and phone number of each tenant, according to the amended law. "We don't require that now," said Construction Official Daniel F. Newman Jr. "The rental CO already has the tenants' name but it doesn't have occupancy allowed." The allowed number of occupants in a rented dwelling is based on the square footage of a dwelling through an equation formulated by the BOCA (Building Officials and Code Administrators) National Building Code of 1996. The BOCA code requires a 70-square-foot bedroom for a single occupant, or 50 square feet per occupant if there is more than one person living in the dwelling, said Construction Official Daniel F. Newman Jr. A rental dwelling with one or two occupants is not required to have a living room or dining room, but a dwelling that allows three to five tenants requires a living room at least 120 square feet in size and an 80-square-foot dining room. Every rental unit must have a kitchen sized at least 50 square feet. A unit with six or more tenants must have a 60 square-foot kitchen, according to the code Newman said. Local code enforcers will use the BOCA code to determine the maximum occupancy of a rented dwelling and will provide that number on the certificate of occupancy that is not to be posted farther than five feet from a front door. If the allowed maximum occupancy of a dwelling is exceeded, then each tenant living in the unit at the time of occupancy will receive a summons for overcrowding. The rental unit's landlord may also be subjected to a fine, although the ordinance does not state what the fine would be. Helen Fayad, a former Brick councilwoman and Realtor and the owner of a property management firm, said the amendment isn't necessary or enforceable. "We have a very tight ordinance already," she said. "Our code enforcers are very careful in going over the rentals. They check everything. The council should have meetings with the code enforcement officers. Or invite a judge in to explain the law to them. I don't see a need for a change in the ordinance. I think the law is adequate." She said she often goes to court to evict tenants but the judge throws the cases out. "I can walk into a house and see people sleeping on the floor," she said. "You go before a judge for over occupancy and the judge throws it out. They have relatives move in. You can't do nothing about it. If they're guests you can't stop them. It's very hard to prove over occupancy." "That's absolutely true," Newman said, "but it's even harder to prove at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. That's kind of the idea behind having the police do it." Fayad's fiancee, Michael Toth (and father of Councilman Dan Toth), who works at Fayad's agency, All Around Realty, requested at a recent council meeting that the council change some aspects of the amendment before adopting it. "I think it's on the right track but there's a couple pitfalls in here," Michael Toth said. He said the ordinance doesn't list a fine for a violation, and that expecting tenants to post the certificate of occupancy within five feet of the front door is unrealistic. "Where's it going to be?" he asked. "Under the portrait of Uncle Ernie or above the portrait of Uncle Ernie?" Tenants won't want the CO to interfere with their wall hangings, he said. So many homes are built on 30- to 40-foot lots he said. "They're substandard by today's standards," Toth said. "You'll be condemning housing if you write it too strongly." He warned that the courts are on the renter's side. "Say you have a limit of four people and an aunt gets sick, she has custody of her children and it's beyond [the allowed] occupancy," he said. "Try to get them evicted, it will be thrown out. You have to be careful." Although landlords may not always know when a renter has overloaded his or her house or apartment with people, they should, Acropolis said. "Any landlord who is worth his weight in salt is going to know how many people are in his house," he said. Maybe not. One of Brick's own code enforcers, Donald Forgione, was issued a warning in April 2005 for overcrowding at a Freehold Borough multifamily home of which he was landlord, according to a Freehold property maintenance report issued by the borough's Quality of Life Enforcement Team. Five people were allowed to live in the home. The report states seven people were sleeping in the apartment. Forgione could not be reached for comment.