Boarding Houses

An ordinary dwelling house in Harvard Heights is being marketed as 15 bedrooms. In Pico Heights a lodging-house is shared by 35, with beds doing double-duty, sheets never sharp, as day sleepers succeed day laborers. Another property in Angelus Vista rents 22 rooms.

"Higher density is good," coo the smart growth sect. Still, is this what they had in mind? In some Los Angeles neighborhoods, hyper extended families and passels of unrelated individuals are serried into detached single family housing like passengers on the Chiyoda line.

The California Code of Regulations, which includes the 1991 Uniform Housing Code, contains residential occupancy standards. A home must have at least one room of 120 square feet. Additional rooms must be at least 70 square feet. Two people may occupy a room, and for each additional 50 square feet, so may another (occupy). The Code does not distinguish between a bedroom, living room, dining room, or kitchen. All rooms can be used for sleeping except bathrooms, hallways, closets, and stairwells.

Reads a bit loosey goosey, eh? Still some affordable housing advocates protest stricter limits, with claims of increased homelessness and market impenetrability.

Who's minding the store? I've seen sleeping arrangements in hallways, once on a staircase landing, and in closets (mostly children in large closets). Recently, I toured a property on Maple wherein four shared a bedroom with miniature doberman pinschers. Hanging from the ceiling, a heavy glass chandelier was coated with dust thick enough to resemble fur. I never discovered how many bedrooms the house contained, false walls had been built, dividing public rooms and even other bedrooms in halves and thirds. Some spaces were window less, sanctuaries for mysterious odors.

Another installation, in Harvard Heights, featured a line of damp washing in the foyer. Towels competed for hooks in perpetually humid, sweltering bathrooms. Most sport the usual kitchen living-room with an industrial range burning night and day, and its side-kick, the enormous vat of clarified pork fat to aid deep frying. Optional: the perpetual and pungent (though not always objectionable) smell of fermenting vegetables (kimchi).

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