A new city effort to find what Mayor Stephen Brayman called the “best practice” to enforce overcrowded households may place further stress on finding housing in College Park.

Prince George’s County law states that no more than five unrelated people can live in a house, but several students ignore the law due to the limited affordable housing options near the campus.

The city is looking to the Maryland Municipal League for advice in solving the issue of overcrowding after Brayman attended the league’s June convention in Ocean City.

“I’ve asked for staff to reach out to the Maryland Municipal League to determine whether or not they could assist in developing a task force to look at what best practices may exist or could be developed that could be fair and might help us enforce or ensure that, under current law, overcrowding doesn’t exist,” Brayman said.

Tom Reynolds, Manager of Research and Information Management at the Maryland Municipal League said he received a call from the assistant city manager relating to what role the organization can play in aiding city officials. No action has been taken so far, but he is advising the city to compare College Park to areas that have also dealt with residents who avoid the overcrowding laws.

“The kind of thing we might do is direct people to other municipalities that have passed ordinances related to a particular issue,” Reynolds said. “There may be expertise at the state level, like the Department of Housing and Community Development, so we might be able to put [city officials] in contact with somebody there.”

Brayman stressed that the issue of overcrowding is not student-based, as it involves many different parties. He said he believes with input from all groups involved-landlords, tenants, students, the city and citizens – a “best practice” can be developed to prevent overcrowding.

“There’s got to be some fair way to deal with this,” Brayman said. Landlords look to avoid overcrowding in their property, but keeping tenants from allowing others to live in the houses is no easy task, said David Dorsch, chairman of the College Park Landlords Committee.

“The landlords aren’t policing their rental houses 24/7,” Dorsch said. “He doesn’t go by the house every day; he’s not there for roll call in the morning to find out who is there and who is not there.”

The lack of enforcement has allowed several households, such as one Knox Road house where seven students are crammed inside, to ignore the county laws.

The residents of the house, who wished to remain anonymous, said they plan to keep six students there for the upcoming semester, and admitted that not everyone is on the lease.

One of the residents, who was taking a summer class, said there were some annoyances to living in a house with six other people.

“There wasn’t a whole lot of privacy,” the resident said. “It was never quiet, and I was the only one taking summer classes, so I could never study in the house.”

The student moved out once the class was over and will be living elsewhere in the fall, but his crunched housing situation is fairly common.

“The apartments are more expensive and they are farther away,” the student said “It’s cheaper to join in with somebody in a house that is closer and more convenient.”

Contact reporter Mike Fratto at newsdesk@dbk.umd.edu.