Stamford, CT Building Safety: Door Locking Hardware (2026)

Section 146-39, titled "Bathroom facilities; cooking; door locks," sits in Article II of Chapter 146, which governs apartments, multiple dwellings, rooming houses and hotels. Subsection A requires at least one flush water closet, lavatory basin, and bathtub or shower, connected to an approved water supply and sewer system, for every six people (or fraction) residing in a rooming house or hotel, including the operator's family if they share the facilities; in male-only rooming houses, flush urinals may replace up to half the required water closets.

Those facilities must be reasonably accessible from a common hall on the same floor as the units they serve, supplied with heated and unheated water at all times, and cannot sit in a basement without written Director of Health approval, or in a cellar at all. Subsection B bans cooking inside any individual rooming unit or hotel room outright, and bars communal cooking and dining facilities in the building unless the Director of Health approves them in writing. Subsection C is the door lock rule: rooming unit and hotel room doors must have operating locks to ensure privacy.

The requirement sits inside a licensing regime: § 146-34 requires every rooming house or hotel to hold a current operating license from the Director of Health, displayed conspicuously in the building's common ways and renewed annually, and § 146-37 lets the Director suspend or deny that license if a cited violation, including a missing door lock, isn't corrected within sixty days of notice. An owner aggrieved by a violation notice, license denial or suspension can appeal to the Health Commission under City Charter § C5-40-4(d), per §§ 146-8 and 146-38.