The New Haven Register recently reported that a West Haven home owner was arrested for allegedly violated building codes, illegally altering a multi-family home from a 2-family to a 3-family without city approval. This arrest comes in the wake of the recent deaths of two firefighters who were responding to a fire at a multi-family home in Bridgeport. That home was altered from a 2-family to a 3-family but public records show that Bridgeport officials never approved plans and no permits were ever issued to add an apartment on the third floor where the firefighters perished.
City and town building codes are in place for a reason. They keep us safe. Period. The purpose is to make sure that workmanship was performed in the proper manner and corners were not cut. Additionally, there must be appropriate egress points in all homes and going through the permit process ensures this.
When buyers are looking at properties and thinking about making modifications they often ask us if they need to pull permits for the work that they’d like to do. This question is typically asked because in many cases people are afraid their property taxes will increase if the town or city knows they’ve made improvements to their home. The majority of people seem to want to live in as nice a home as possible, or get as much rent as possible in a multi-family conversion, but pay as little in taxes as possible.
This reality causes some people to cut corners. They don’t pull the building permits themselves or tell their contractor not to pull the permits because they don’t want the town to find out about the work they’ve done. In cases where a home is increasing the number of apartments, there is typically a zoning approval process that should be followed as well. This also does not happen in certain cases because their plan would potentially not be approved for various reasons (improper egress points, neighborhood opposes, etc.) so they just circumvent the system and ignore the legal process they should follow.
The tragedy in this case is that it has to get to the point of people dying before a city or town chooses to take more aggressive actions to enforce their building and zoning codes. Municipalities are typically short staffed in these areas and efforts are focused on inspecting the jobs where people actually did pull permits and follow the law, rather than hunting down those that have chosen to evade it. It is frustrating, to say the least.
There are many folks out there that do follow the law and go through the necessary steps that need to be taken when doing renovations or trying to increase the number of units in a dwelling. These people should be applauded. They understand the system is there for a reason and go along with it even though it may cost them some more money or time down the line. Purposely ignoring building code and laws is just asking for trouble, whether it’s when you go to resell or if some type of tragedy occurs. In the end, will it really be worth it if something horrible happens?