Emergency Exit
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An apartment question.
D4 lives with her husband and G2 in a three-story building in the city. Her landlord, Mark, is a pretty good guy from what I understand. Lower level is a yoga/exercise place, with an entrance on 18th st. The entry to her apartment, and the one above it is adjacent to that door, also on 18th st.
Adjacent to her building is a vacant lot that they were using for parking their cars. Mark didn't own that property, a guy named Sean owns it. They signed a lease for the parking spot when they moved in, but that lease expired in April 2019. Since that time, they've been paying month-to-month.
The rear of their building has a porch that can be accessed from all three places, and there are stairs that descend to ground level, and there is a fence that has a lockable door that they use for access, taking the garbage out, etc. Immediately adjacent to the back porch is a coachhouse. Immediately to the right of her building is another structure, with no room in-between.
Last Tuesday, Sean told D4 that they're breaking ground to put up a building in the vacant lot on Thursday. She obviously panicked, not having a place to park two cars within 48 hours. I looked into the law on "month-to-month" rental and it seems clear that if the lease lapses, the tennant is "month-to-month." However, if the landlord wants them to move, he has to give 30 days' notice, in writing. Sean gave no such notice. D4 was able to find parking in a building nearby, and they broke ground for the new building on Thursday, surrounding the lot with construction style fencing. She had already paid November's rent, and has asked for a refund.
However, there's a bigger issue.
Chicago Ordinance states that any apartment has to have two exits. To only have one is a fire hazard, because there's a possibility that the only exit could be blocked by fire. Looking at the diagram, you see that the door exit is now blocked. She notified Mark of this a couple of days ago, and she says that Sean and Mark were having an animated discussion about the loss of the rear entrance.
Now that ground has been broken, what recourse does Mark have? Looks like he can petition the city to stop work on the building next door, or he'll have to reconfigure the rear exit somehow. But D4 says there's really no way that can be accomplished, considering the coachhouse.
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“I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.” ~Winston S. Churchill
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@kluurs said in Emergency Exit:
Is there any kind of walkway along the side of the coachhouse?
Nope.
@mark said:
Seems strange that due diligence wasn't done, prior to the groundbreaking.
I agree. The question is who should due the diligence? Mark, the guy who owns the building? I don't think it's his responsibility to know what his neighbor is planning.
Sean, the guy who owns the lot? I would think that he would be required to get a permit for construction, and the city would be the party doing the inspection and giving the go-ahead.
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@kluurs said in Emergency Exit:
In your or my town, there's no way that could happen with code enforcement. A phone call to their code folks might result in work stoppage until such time as a suitable solution is developed.
I'll bet you dollars to donuts that Mark (the building landlord) is ALL OVER that.
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Here is their back porch, and you'd walk downstairs to a fence that had a door into the vacant parking lot. You're looking to the east.
Looking over the east fence of the porch is the building that has no room for any egress between.
Looking to the west you see this (the stairs lead to the apartment above hers). You can see the backhoe in the background there.
This is where the parking lot used to be. They would back out of the vacant lot, and onto the alley you see there.
The backhoe is exactly where the exit is supposed to be.
And here's what was done to the parking lot.
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Overall I would say your daughter's landlord might be screwed here, and by extension your daughter. As far as I can tell, Sean is not required by law to provide adequate fire exits to a property he does not own.
What is the coachhouse being used for? That seems to be the fly in the ointment.
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@kluurs said in Emergency Exit:
Is it even 30 feet
Good question. It was diagonal parking on the west side - you'd pull in right up to the building on the left. Then you'd have to back out into the alley, and that was always a tight squeeze. My car is about 6 feet wide, and I'd guess that I'd have a foot on either side - to my right would be D4's building, and to the left were parked cars, diagonally positioned.
If a car is 18 feet long, and parked at a 45 degree angle, that would add about 13 feet to the width of the lot. At best it's 20 feet wide.
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@kluurs said in Emergency Exit:
20 feet?!! Jeez - unless this is unincorporated, I can't imagine them letting him put up anything larger than a Tuff Shed. He's screwed.
I might be underestimating it by a few feet. Perhaps I had 1 ½ feet on each side as I backed out, but it was tighter than Aqua's sister's ... wait. never mind. But you know what I mean.
If there were diagonal cars to my left as I backed out. that might be 14 feet. Maybe. Do the math - figure a 18 foot hypotenuse of a right triangle.
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@Loki said in Emergency Exit:
I feel like I’m missing something here as it seems impossible.
Is the problem how your daughter’s rental property is zoned?
Maybe Sean knows something.
The problem is quite interesting.
The landlord of her apartment, Mark, is required to have 2 exits (fire code).
One of those exits is onto Sean's property.
Sean's building a property there blocks Mark's exit.
The questions are, afaict:
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The violation of the lease that D4 signed. Though expired, the law says that she needs to get 30 days written notice that the lease is terminated. That never happened.
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What will landlord Mark do about complying to code, considering that landlord Sean wants to block emergency egress from Mark's building?
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There are NO alternatives for emergency egress from Mark's building.
All of this will become moot in about 4-6 months, when D4 moves. However, it's certainly
funinteresting to watch.In the meantime, she has secured parking for her car at a location close by. SIL is parking his car at the condo. Since he's working from home, this is a minor inconvenience.
As Mik pointed out, the legal question is interesting. What legal responsibility does Sean have regarding Mark's compliance with code? Also, as Kluurs mentions, the question of how compliant with code is this new construction with such a narrow lot? I've tried to find the City of Chicago code about "narrow lots" but i've not been too successful.
Insert popcorn gif below.....
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