How many people can live in one house in New York City?

Question

There was recently a tragic fire in New York City; I think 8 or 9 died as a result and this number could go up.

In the news, they stated "Twenty-two people from the West African nation lived in a wooden house that had been split into two apartments in the Bronx section of New York."

They had a photo and it was a three story row house type structure.

My question is: How many people can legally live in one house? What regulates this....housing authority? fire code?

Answer 1

It has to do with a fire code.

They do it by how much space. At a certain capacity in an emergency people begin to trample over each other.

Like all dinning halls and party places somewhere have it posted "this room can not whole more than X amount of people" if a fire marshal found out you had X+1 people there they can shut the place down and fine the owners.

Every few years there is a story in new york about a club where there was a fire and people get trampled and killed trying to escape.