Minneapolis Encourages Duplex Tenants To Get Married
said on August 13th, 2009 categorized under: Legal Stuff, Tenants
Sometimes government rules and regulations just don’t make sense.
Take, for example, the city of Minneapolis’ rule on the number of unrelated people who can occupy a rental unit.
If a property has a zoning designation of R 1-3 (residential 1- 3 units), a maximum of three unrelated people can live in each of the units.
The number of bedrooms or amount of square footage in each is irrelevant. In other words, if you own a duplex with a five bedroom unit, you can only have three unrelated people living in it.
If the multi-family property is zoned R 4-6, however, you can have up to five unrelated people in each unit; even if there’s only one bedroom in each apartment.
Of course, if the other people occupying a unit are related by blood, marriage, or adoption, an R 1-3 property can house the family plus two unrelated people.
In a R 4-6 zoned multi-family building, a family can have up to four unrelated people living with them; again, regardless of the number of bedrooms in the apartment.
What happens if the city discovers there are more residents than allowed in a duplex? The landlord can lose his rental license.
So if you have a Minneapolis duplex, say, by the U of M or in Uptown with a couple of four bedroom units, how can you make sure you’re in compliance?
Get your tenants to marry or adopt each other.
This sounds suspiciously like a great way to get sued for discrimination. It is Saturday, so I can’t check on the official number of people allowed per unit in Washington state, but landlords are definitely not allowed to discriminate on the basis of marital status here. Limiting the number of people based on family/marital status sounds like trouble to me!
Hi Jacquie-
Landlords aren’t allowed to discriminate on the basis of marital status here, either. However, they city does restrict the number of unrelated people they can have in a unit.
My guess is this is common in metorpolitan areas nationwide. I do know, however, that the means of arriving at a number vary. The city of St Paul, for example, bases their calculations on the number of square feet in a unit, which, to me anyway, makes a lot more sense than basing calculations simply on the way the property is zoned. Limiting the number of people in a duplex based on the number of bedrooms it has makes a lot more sense.
Kari
This is interesting. It seems all of the units by the U of M are 3+ BRs and as a former student, I hardly knew anyone with less than 3 people in a rental unit. Is the city enforcing this strictly? Or are the landlords really adept at dodging detection?
Btw, do you have link to this ordinance?