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Increasingly, I have noticed residents have started to leave what seems like their entire shoe collection by their front door on the common property.
Whether it has some cultural significance, or whatever, it is very unsightly. Whilst you may not describe them as obstruction, my inclination is send round a general notice that they all be removed.
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There are a couple of issues:
Fire Safety – Are the shoes obstructing the exit system from the building i.e. are they obstructing a path of travel from the building?
It is a compliance breach to obstruct a path of travel from a building. From memory the unobstructed width of the path of travel must be at least one meter.
An obstruction does not necessarily mean a blockage. It can mean an obstacle.
In a dark and smoke filled corridor during an emergency a person would not want to fall over the shoes, thereby creating an additional obstruction by their fall.
By-Laws: Does your building have a by-law relating to occupants and their leaving of possessions on common property?
If you are not on the committee then write to the committee and request that this issue be raised at the next committee meeting. Suggest that a group letter or notice would be a good idea.
If the properties are tenanted then the letter can be placed under the door or sent to the owner and agent with the instruction that the letter be passed on to the tenant.
This reminds me of friends who moved into a new upmarket block of flats and found that all three other front doors in their lift lobby had shoes outside.
Two of them were occupied by SE Asian residents (it’s polite to take your shoes off when you enter a home) and the other was downsizing farmers (muddy boots are always kicked off at the back door). So yes there is a cultural component.
My friends invoked fire safety issues as their way of clearing the corridors. Personally, I think it makes a place more homely to feel that people are relaxed about leaving their shoes outside their front doors. As long as it isn’t every pair of shoes that they own!
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I suspect this is one of those things to which people have greatly differing responses. For some it might an offensive eye-sore but I would be in line with Jimmy T on this. I think, within reasons, a few shoes by a front door looks more homely and it is generally harmless. I would not bother doing anything about this unless there were so many shoes as to be a genuine hazard. A little bit of untidiness can make things look less starkly institutional.
I would be much more hard-line about things like a consistent colour scheme, shapes, forms and materials for the building structure than more ephemeral things like pot-plants or shoes.
Christmas wreaths on common property doors etc for a limited amount of time I’m OK with, but I am not a fan of shoes outside apartments.
You probably have a reasonable case to have the shoes removed based on fire regulations.
Sometimes these issues can escalate. People can assume that tacit approval has been given so they then push things a little bit further.
I live in a building where occupants not only place their shoes outside their door but also install portable shoe racks to store many pairs of shoes. This clearly impacts on the travel path.
A men’s size 13 shoe is almost 30 cm long!
I can’t see why the often times big and smelly shoes can’t be placed inside the apartment in a shoe rack. These racks aren’t expensive. IKEA sell them.
I know everyone has differing opinions but come on, the common property is not an extension of your wardrobe, if you don’t like them inside,why is it ok to leave them on the common property?
The residents downstairs occasionally do this – I don’t want visitors coming in and seeing a motley collection of shoes. I usually remove them and hand them back to their owners.
Does anyone else think it is strange that the shoes are apparently too dirty to go inside someone’s unit, but, somehow, the shoes are so clean that they will not soil common areas? I don’t know why it is such a problem for residents to use their own balconies, or tiled areas in their units, to store their dirty shoes.
Shoes are one thing, Which I detest, I once had a neighbour that when cleaning her apartment would put her garbage in the lobby while she cleaned, sometimes It would sit there all Day.