Ordinance would limit people living in a house to 4

University of Idaho students looking to save money by having multiple roommates in a house or apartment may have to think again about how many people they try to squeeze into one residence next year.
The city of Moscow is considering a new ordinance that would reduce the limit of non-related people living in a single-family dwelling from six to four. People already allowed to live in a residence with five or six people would not be required to conform to the new ordinance. The new ordinance is an amendment to an existing ordinance.

Bill Belknap, director of community development in Moscow, said the ordinance was prompted by resident complaints over the past three to four years.
Initially, the complaints were focused on people, mostly students, living in boarding houses. A boarding house is not considered “living together as a single housekeeping unit,” because occupants don’t necessarily have a common right to all parts of the house, Belknap said. He said after the initial complaints were investigated, few cases of boarding houses could be pinpointed.

Over the past year, complaints have intensified, which prompted the City Council to form a committee to investigate the claims and ultimately to create a new ordinance, Belknap said.
Other complaints focused on different issues such as parking, traffic and noise complaints.
“With the higher intensity uses that college students generally have on houses, it can really create an impact,” Belknap said. “It’s usually noise and the occasional party. Each student usually has their own car which can create parking issues.”
He said the hope of the ordinance is to mitigate some of the impacts by changing the regulations from six people to four.

Belknap said one of the bigger features of the ordinance is defining “family” and how it relates to how many people can live in one residence.
The proposed ordinance would define a single-family dwelling as “a detached building or manufactured home designed for and occupied exclusively by one family.”
The new ordinance would establish four categories of family, whereas the current ordinance only allows for two.
The first definition states that “related” shall mean persons related by blood, marriage, adoption and other guardianships. The second states that family would not mean any club, fraternity, sorority, boarding houses or other organizations. The third says two people who are not related can live with any number of additional people that are related to the two non-related people, for instance an unmarried couple living with children from a previous relationship. The fourth states that up to eight unrelated people that are mentally or physically disabled may live together with resident staff.

Shad Frazier, a music performance major at UI, is renting a single-family home in Moscow with six other people. Frazier said said he and his other roommates would not be able to afford to live in the home if there were only four people.
“I think it should have to come down to the rental agencies more than anything,” Frazier said. “They shouldn’t limit it by people; they should limit it on the size of the house.”
He said in a smaller space, such as an apartment with a specific amount of rooms, it may be more applicable to limit the amount of people living in the residence.
Because his is in a bigger house it has more parking opportunities, which has never been a problem for the house, Frazier said.

Lisa Feltis, assistant manager for Apartment Rentals, said she didn’t think that the ordinance would affect the students that rent apartments or houses from her company.
“For the most part we usually have one person per bedroom,” Feltis said. “For the four bedroom houses we might have a little challenge limiting students, but it would be a minor thing, not a major one.”

She said she did think it would affect some students who were trying to save money by having more people in one home.
The ordinance states there are exceptions for each of Moscow’s four residential districts, which could allow more than four un-related people in one home as long as they meet the specified requirements, including off-street parking and making sure the use of the residence is conducive with the rest of the surrounding neighborhood.
Each of the residential districts is measured by how many single-family dwellings there are in the area.

Belknap said there will be a strong push for an educational campaign for the students of the university and the general public to inform people of the new changes if the ordinance is passed.
“We are going to encourage students to look into the places they are renting to make sure they are conforming with the law,” Belknap said. “We’d much rather answer these questions up front, rather than after the fact.”

The Moscow City Council will meet Sept. 4 to discuss the ordinance.
To read a draft copy of the ordinance go to www.moscow.id.us.

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