When Hall County firefighters showed up to a predawn house fire at a single-story brick and wood frame home in the Chicopee Village earlier this month, they expected a family of four or five people at most would be living there.

Instead, there were seven adults and three children living in the two-bedroom, one-bath house, which has about 900 square feet of heated space.

“Typically when we pull up on a house, we think of three or four people we may have to search for,” Fire Chief David Kimbrell said. “If you have 10 people trapped in a structure, that’s going to tax you quite a bit. Time is of absolute essence when you pull up to a house that’s full of smoke. If you have 10 people in there, it just further complicates it.”

The occupants of the house, owned by Octaviano Lopez, all made it out safely. Fire officials do not believe all seven adults were related.

According to public records, the house is in a neighborhood zoned single-family residential, and under county housing codes, the 896 square feet of heated space did not meet minimum space requirements for 10 people.

The house remained vacant this week with restoration work under way. Lopez was unavailable for comment.

The fire is the most recent example of Hall County residents living in tight quarters that could be defined as overcrowding. Often they aren’t discovered until there is a fire.

In December 2008, Gainesville firefighters put out a fire at a 3,200-square-foot building divided into four apartments. Five people were living in one apartment, five in another apartment, and three more in a third apartment.

In January 2009, a fire broke out in an Oakwood home where five adults and two children were living in a 1,800-square-foot home.

In the most egregious instance, 13 people were living in a single-wide mobile home that caught fire off Cleveland Highway in January 2009, according to Hall County fire officials.

Officials say complaints of overcrowding aren’t as prevalent as they used to be in Hall County. Often officials aren’t aware of the cases until an emergency like a fire reveals the nature of the living arrangements.

“Unless there’s a fire and a fire official calls you up and says, ‘There’s a lot of people living here,’ we may not know anything about it,” said Gary Kansky, a Gainesville marshal who enforces city ordinances. “It’s complaint driven.”

Complaints from neighbors still come in, Kansky said, but often they aren’t violations of the letter of the law.

Gainesville’s property code requires at least 70 square feet of bedroom space for the first occupant and 50 square feet for each additional occupant. In living rooms, 150 square feet per occupant is required if six or more people are living in the house. For dining rooms, the requirement is 100 square feet per person. The code prohibits using kitchens and “nonhabitable spaces” for sleeping purposes.

“It’s fairly lenient,” said Larry Brown, the city’s manager of inspection services. The code used by Gainesville is the Georgia Department of Community Affairs’ amended version of the widely-used International Property Maintenance Code of 2006. “You can have a lot of people in a fairly small residence.”

In the case of zoning, finding violations of the single-family residential requirements are more problematic.

“Here’s the hard thing — prove that they’re not related,” Kansky said.

Added Brown, “It can be hard to enforce when you really don’t know if these folks are spending the night or are full-time tenants.”
Kansky said marshals may check water usage, a good indication of how many folks are living in a house. Marshals try to work with owners and tenants to bring compliance without writing citations, he said.

That’s also the case in county code enforcement. In Hall County, an overcrowding case hasn’t reached the citation level in magistrate court in at least 10 years, said staff attorney Anne Bishop, who prosecutes county ordinance violations. Several overcrowding complaints have been resolved without a citation since then, she said.

The county’s housing code is similar to the city’s, requiring 150 square feet of floor space for the first occupant and at least 100 square feet for each additional occupant. Bedrooms require 70 square feet for the first person and 50 square feet for each additional person.

Under county zoning laws, no more than five unrelated people can live in a house together, not counting live-in domestic servants.
Gainesville Fire Chief Jon Canada said while crowded houses can be troubling from a public safety perspective, fire officials only have jurisdiction over the number of occupants in commercial buildings.

“When we encounter a house or apartment through a fire call that may be overcrowded, we pass the address and other information to the city code enforcement office,” Canada said.

And that’s often when officials first find out there’s a problem that needs fixing, Kansky said.

“Until something happens, we may not know about it.”