Occupants per sq foot?

Question

Dawn Anastasi · Answer

Here's a link to HUD's Occupancy guidelines.

Account Closed · Answer

Wow, they couldn't have made it any more difficult to find or understand lol.  And I'm comfortable looking up laws.

It's in here on page 479.  It's from the city code Chapter 257, in this table:

TABLE 257-4  CAPACITY OF HABITABLE ROOMS

http://city.milwaukee.gov/ImageLibrary/Groups/ccCl...

Here's the relevant section.  This means this is how many square feet you need, apparently per room and then per person:

Bedrooms in convents, dormitories, monasteries Rooms occupied by one person....................... 70

Rooms occupied by more than one person  (per person) .................................................. 50

Bedrooms in homes for the aged  Rooms occupied by one person .................... 70

Rooms occupied by more than one  person (per person) ....................................... 60

That's still confusing to me - are they only talking about monasteries or old people's homes?  I didn't see anything about regular old apartments separately listed.  And why are there two references to rooms with 2 people - one only needing 50 sq ft and the other needing 60 sq feet?  Anyway, it looks to me like you should be fine if you have at least 60 square feet per person in the studio main room/sleeping room.

I'll assume there's more than that.  You could try and get someone at city hall to put in writing their interpretation of the law LOL.  Whoever wrote that law gets paid too much.  How hard can it be to write something that's clear?

Yeesh.

Anyway, that's the best I could do.  That document has all of your city codes, so would be handy to keep.  Although, I question whether or not you'll be able to make heads or tails out of it anyway lol.

But, bottom line is, you could argue that if the max square footage needed for 2 people in an aged person homes is 60 square feet per person, and you have 100 square feet per person, that it should be reasonable to deduct that you're in compliance.

Whew.

Corina Eufinger · Answer

In Wisconsin the rule of thumb is 2 people per bedroom unless municipality has something different. In the even of studio, it would be still fine to have 2 people. If you were go raise her rent because of the visitor it would have to been outlined in the original lease ddocuments. You maybe able to  have her sign an addendum stating that she agrees to the amount and the duration of it. I cannot say it would hold it would hold up in court though if it ended up there. The particulars of this are too numerous to me ton here.

Occupants per sq foot?

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