Illustration: Emma Erickson

Welcome to “Apartment Department,” Curbed’s advice column by Clio Chang. Join us every other Wednesday for questions about making peace with noisy-sex neighbors, the nuances of roommate fridge etiquette, and whatever else you might need to know about renting, buying, or crying in the New York City housing market.

Got a problem? Email clio.chang@nymag.com.

Dear Apartment Department,

We keep our shoes and coats organized on racks on the landing outside our four-story walk-up — everything is neatly in two coat racks and one shoe rack. But our landlord keeps yelling at us that we’re not allowed to keep things there and that we “don’t rent the landing.” Almost everyone else I know in NYC keeps things on their landing. He claims it’s a fire hazard, but the stairs are completely clear and no one else is walking through our space to get out (we’re on the top floor). We really need the space. How do we convince him to leave us alone?

Sincerely,

Don’t Tread on My Landing

Dear Tread,

It’s true that a lot of New Yorkers keep things on their landings. Space is valuable and we need every inch we can get. I’m not here to scold you (I’d do it too), and it honestly sounds like you have a much more organized situation than most. But unfortunately the city is on the side of your landlord — a spokesperson for the FDNY confirmed that it’s against the fire code to store personal property in building hallways and corridors. I even asked them specifically about top-floor landings and it’s still a no-go: “Storage is not permitted in hallways and on landings,” per the department.

So it’s illegal, but is it actually dangerous? Is this just Big Landing Propaganda? I turned to Bob Fash, a retired New York City firefighter and fire marshal who worked in the department for 25 years, to ask how big of a deal your situation was, really. He was also unmoved. “They may say it’s clear for people to go down, but it could be a hazard for firefighters going up and getting caught on stuff,” Fash said. You might think the landing is still clear enough to move freely but in an emergency, firefighters wearing and carrying a lot of equipment will need way more space to maneuver than your perhaps daintier selves. (Fash told me about a time that a fellow firefighter got his mask tied up in a nail salon’s storage racks and got stuck.)

This doesn’t excuse the way your landlord is handling the situation, if in fact he’s yelling at you about it. (No one should be yelling in a professional relationship, but maybe you mean “yelling” in a more figurative sense.) He’s probably more concerned about a potential fine than your well-being, honestly. But if a city inspector issues him a violation notice, he could technically use this as a reason to start an eviction proceeding against you, according to Ronald Languedoc, tenant lawyer at Himmelstein Gribben & Joseph. It wouldn’t come out of nowhere, though. “If a landlord was going to start an eviction proceeding, they would have to give the tenant written notice,” Languedoc said. “Usually this would be a notice to cure.” So you would get a chance to clear your landing before your landlord could actually kick you out. (Seth Miller, a lawyer at Collins, Dobkin & Miller, confirmed this, writing: “It is hard to conceive that a tenant would actually lose an apartment over it, especially not without being able to cure it.”)

But don’t worry — I’m still here to help. While it may seem there’s no way your racks full of coats and shoes could fit inside your apartment, E.J. Rosen, the founder of the New York City–based home-organizing company Space Doctors, assures us that they can. (In all her career, she’s come across only one book-collecting tenant in a studio apartment who was beyond her help.) “It’s always a strange puzzle, but the puzzle can always be solved,” Rosen said. For shoes, Rosen points to tilting cabinets that are perfect for narrow passageways or clear shoe boxes for the bottom of a closet. Coats are bigger, but there are solutions there too. Maybe it’s about figuring out what you truly need to be accessible and what can be tucked away for the season. And don’t we all have too much stuff anyway? Maybe the version of you with a clear landing is also a version of you who has a “capsule wardrobe” and meditates every morning. Good luck!

Have a question for the Apartment Department? You can send it to clio.chang@nymag.com.

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