Quote from @Michael Dallas: If you have rules, you have to be prepared to enforce them. 

You would need to do your due diligence and research each property very deeply as some local lien won't be revealed without a deep dive with local code enforcement.

If not, maybe try contacting local law enforcement? 

Police are the enforcers of the law and they were on site.

If you are zoned single family, then I would doubt City of Dallas would allow rezoning in most areas, and also not issue permit, as you are turning single family into mutli-family.Have people done it....sure.Once your neighbors figure it out and complain about it, then likely you get a cease and desist order from code enforcement.   

You can even set a rule that items left in common areas after the deadline will be placed in storage and only returned when tenant pays the fine, plus the cost of moving and storage (check your local laws to see what options are available).If you are going to set rules, you need to be prepared to enforce them.

its a small department there in MS its on lakeland blvd you can walk right in and talk to one of their enforcement officers in person ( pre covid) and figure out how to do it.Now granted this law is broken everyday in Jackson you just need to go to the RIG meetings to figure that out  LOL 

It helps to hear how you handled a similar situation, I'l see if my city has a similar ordinance and use it for increased enforcement .

Regarding wood fire escape, I would talk to code enforcement.

But an architect has thousands of pages of building code to think about and figure out what applies and what doesn't and how the code should be interpreted, and how the code enforcement official who will be looking over the plan will interpret it.