Steve Wesley had no idea his path to the bathroom one morning last August would be blocked by an East Lansing housing inspector.

One moment he was rising out of bed, shaking the sleep off himself and looking to experience that all-important morning relief.

The next, he was face-to-face with a man who said he knew Wesley and his roommates were over-occupying their Virginia Street home.

"He just kinda strolled in and started asking questions," the advertising junior said of the inspector.

"He said he suspected we were over-occupying because of things like high water bills, too many cars in the driveway and he also mentioned noise complaints.

"He wouldn't tell me who called us in or for what reason."

At first, Wesley said he tried to conceal the fact that he and his roommates were violating occupancy restrictions - cramming 10 people into a duplex approved only for six - but when the inspector pressed the point that the penalty would be lesser with his cooperation, Wesley came clean.

"He said, 'If you lie to me, it's going to be even worse,' so I told him the truth," Wesley said.

After the inspector departed with the names of every resident in the home, Wesley was left to explain to his fellow over-occupants that they had been busted.

Chase Alessandro, one of Wesley's roommates, said he wasn't too worried about the situation at first.

"I'm not an MSU student, so I was just going to duck them," he said of the city officials who stopped at their house every other day to serve them their tickets.

"I felt like if the guy didn't come to me face-to-face and get my license, he couldn't really give me a ticket or prove that I lived there."

But the inspectors soon caught up to everyone, and when all was said and done, each occupant was forced to pay $259 to the city of East Lansing.

Howard Asch, director of the East Lansing Department of Code Enforcement and Neighborhood Conservation, said over-occupancy situations are far from rare, noting that the city ticketed roughly 6 percent of the 1,600 houses inspected last year.

The department is generally tipped off about an occupancy violation, he said.

"Most of the time it's through a complaint received from someone in the neighborhood," he said. "It might be because there are too many vehicles or due to behaviors that are annoying to neighbors."

Asch added that when there is a complaint, the city inspects the property and will sometimes begin an investigation if residents aren't cooperative.

"In most cases, the people that are over-occupying cooperate and there's an advantage to do that," he said. "We sometimes request the city attorney to provide higher penalties in cases where they don't cooperate."

Tickets for over-occupancy range anywhere from $250 to $1,000. In addition, the city can issue a ticket for each day it can prove a residence was over-occupied. This, Asch said, rarely happens.

"Our first aim is to stop the over-occupancy," he said. "We usually only issue a few tickets."

As of Sept. 30, the city had issued 495 tickets to 51 properties in 2003. The tickets amounted to $119,548 in fines.

Beyond penalizing just the residents of a property, Asch said the city also can ticket landlords in cases where there are leases that show "clear intent to over-occupy." Although it is generally difficult to prove landlord involvement, Asch recalled one case in which a property owner was fined more than $20,000.

Joe Goodsir, president of Community Resource Management Company, said although he cannot recall the rental firm being fined, over-occupancy is definitely an issue. The company owns about 325 area properties.

"It's a constant problem that we investigate and pursue," he said.

"We have to be aware of things that are happening in our homes."

In situations when his company does detect over-occupancy, it generally gives the violators a number of options, Goodsir said.

"It may be that they made a bad choice, and we give them some days to correct the situation before they are reported," he said. "If they fail to do so, we report them to the housing department."

Goodsir added that he has had very few problems with the code enforcement office.

"Sometimes we're at odds because they have a job to do and we have a job to do," he said.

Goodsir said the housing department does its job well and is fair in the way it enforces city housing code.

In the end, Asch said over-occupying a residence potentially can be dangerous.

"These houses are not designed for more people than they are licensed for," he said. "A lot of times, the over-occupiers are living in rooms that aren't habitable. There may be no way to get out in a fire and the space might not have enough ventilation."

But Alessandro says he feels occupancy laws are a means for the city to pull in extra revenue.

"When you have kids who don't have a lot of money and you move them into a house with two or three extra bedrooms, it only makes sense that they are going to over-occupy," he said.

"They don't really care that you've got some dirty kid living in a room on a futon. They're making a lot of money off this kind of stuff."