Landlord Fined for Renting Apartment Only Accessible via Crawling

Finding housing is difficult, wherever you are: It’s got to be affordable, located in a moderately convenient area (for your lifestyle), and not completely terrible to inhabit. Of course, those three—extremely broad—categories are flexible depending on one’s immediate need. You’re not gonna worry so much about livability if you really need a place now, right?

In England the situation seems to have come to a head. A British landlord, Yaakov Marom, was fined £1,500 for renting an apartment only accessible by crawling, the BBC reports. The local council fined Marom for having a two-foot high staircase, which was deemed a fire hazard. Apparently this isn’t the first time Marom has tried to rent out this patently uninhabitable space—in November 2012, he was issued a prohibition order that banned the use of the second floor of the house.

The occupants of the apartment were paying £420 per month. Marom was only made to pay £1,420 in costs and a victim surcharge of £120. Which begs the question: If it’s like that across the pond, how bad is it here?

[BBC]