I think the empathy here is when you become this desperate the laws become a suggestion.

you cannot seriously be proposing that we relax fire code for rentals.

Sorry to butt-in on this exchange, but I did not see anywhere they proposed such a thing?

I've been homeless and I've gotta say, fire codes are worth the toilet paper they're printed on when it's getting cold out, and you've been through 6 days of constant rain.

Didn't say I was, but clearly mass homelessness constitutes an emergency, and emergencies tend to legitimate, you know, emergency measures of some kind.

Both from the perspective of the squatter and society more broadly.

Without attempting to single handedly devise a comprehensive set of policy reforms to solve homelessness...

Only gonna get worse if nobody does anything that actually works to alleviate the problem.

......

Also, what specifically do you mean by fire egress for a bedroom?

I live in a studio apartment.

I am currently crippled.

In the event of a fire, my exit options are hobbling out of the single door with crutches or a cane, then slowly moving down some stairs.... or falling a couple stories out of a window.

Yeah, no elevator here. Not ADA compliant. Can't afford much on disability alone.

Seems like this guy could probably shimmy out of that crawl space faster than I could hobble down some stairs, and I know cuz some dipshit tripped the alarm at 2 am a few months back and it took me 15 minutes to suit up in braces and then actually get outside the building.

Reason my building isn't ADA compliant is because its an old motel, thats been hastily converted into doing just normal long term rentals... as a kind of emergency measure, toward housing those down on their luck, when housing prices are insane.

Would I prefer to live in an ADA compliant dwelling?

Sure, but I even more strongly prefer to not be homeless because nobody allowed this hasty motel -> apartment conversion to happen, because of fire codes, and I can't afford anywhere that is fully up to code.