Many college students choose to move off-campus after their first year of school. Students can choose from a variety of options like an apartment or renting a house with a larger group of friends.
What most might not know is living with more than three unrelated people in a house is not allowed.
The Bellingham Municipal Code defines family as:
“One of more persons related by blood, marriage or adoption, or not more than 3 unrelated persons, living together within a single dwelling unit.”
By this definition if students are living with more than three people in one house they are going against this definition.
Now this is not a highly enforced rule. Frankly who would go around checking up on this when most of Bellingham goes against this? Some people want to enforce this rule to decrease partying, but others think this rule is unfair.
In December of 2004 a summary of recommendations about Bellingham’s Residential Development Code and Design Guidelines was released by MAKERS architecture with assistance from the Planning and Community Development Department.
One of the recommendations was to change the definition of family in the Bellingham Municipal Code.
In February of 2008 an Agenda Bill was brought before the City Council to decriminalize violating this rule and to change the definition.
Even with all of these pushes to change this rule, the definition of family above can still be found on the City of Bellingham website.
Why hasn’t the city changed this rule? It is understandable when off-the-wall laws made years and years ago stay in the books because no one ever sees them, but this rule has been brought to the attention of the city time and time again.
Hundreds of students are breaking this rule every year when they arrange their off-campus housing. If the city is not going to enforce this archaic rule, why not simply change it?
