Zoning and Public Housing Rules Dictate Who May Live With Whom

People living in nontraditional family arrangements in a number of areas around the country are fighting for their personal freedoms against efforts to control who lives next door.

In some of Denver’s most affluent neighborhoods, for example, “living-in-sin” zoning locks out unmarried couples. In Poughkeepsie, N. Y., four or more people may not occupy the same rental dwelling unless they are related. In Chicago, eight couples living in public housing got married to avoid eviction late last year.

Many communities have housing laws restricting what constitutes a family. The reasons given for these restrictions range from preserving “quality of life” against an influx of outsiders to culling the waiting lists for public housing to curbing drug trafficking.

Supporters of Denver’s 30-year-old code say it encourages family-oriented neighborhoods. “We should stand up and say we stand for families and traditional values,” City Councilman Ted Hackworth said.

“I just do not think it’s appropriate for the city to regulate whether you are married, any more than we should regulate whether you go to church,” said Councilwoman Cathy Reynolds, who has fought for 13 years to repeal the law against cohabitation.

Elinor Lewallen, whose neighborhood is covered by the ordinance, said she opposed it because, for example, if her husband were to die she would not be allowed to take in a housemate so that she could afford to could continue living in her home.

The City Council is to vote on the matter March 27.

Poughkeepsie last month passed its multiple-occupancy limit to discourage groups of college students from crowding into apartments. The ordinance defines a “family” as a group that “in theory, size, appearance, structure and function resembles a traditional family unit,” people who take meals together and share expenses.

“The local newspapers got it a little confused. They said it meant that Kate and Allie wouldn’t be able to live together, but that’s not right,” said City Clerk Patricia Havens. (In the CBS-TV show, two divorced women and their three children share an apartment.)

Delray Beach, Fla., last summer approved an ordinance allowing only one person outside the immediate “family”-- defined as parents and children--to live with a family in a neighborhood zoned single-family. City officials said it was meant to curb overcrowding that can aggravate garbage and noise, traffic congestion and safety problems in neighborhoods.

As of last month, officials had cited 11 households--all occupied by Haitians.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida may challenge the ordinance, said attorney Jim K. Green of the Palm Beach County chapter of the ACLU.

Tamarac, Fla., officials temporarily tabled a similar ordinance after the ACLU threatened to take action. It had proposed that no more than three unrelated people, and no more than five foster children, could live together in a single-family zone.

“We’re creating a recipe for more homelessness,” said Broward County ACLU attorney Larry Corman. In many cities, unmarried couples are barred from public housing.

In Woonsocket, R. I., Dana Dagnese and Susan Arsenau, who have lived together for six years and are expecting their third child, filed a lawsuit alleging that the Woonsocket Housing Authority violated their rights to “freedom of association, family privacy and equal protection of laws” by denying them emergency housing.

U.S. District Judge Ronald R. Lagueux refused last month to issue a preliminary injunction against the rule, however. He said: “Here is a couple in an illicit relationship who are creating children for the welfare rolls, where others who qualify for housing are shunted aside.” No trial date has been set.

The Chicago Housing Authority banned overnight guests in the Rockwell Gardens project last September, after gang violence brought on a police raid. It meant that eight women could not allow their live-in boyfriends to stay with them unless they took a trip to the altar. The 16 residents--one couple has seven children--were married in a group ceremony in November.

In Massachusetts, three couples filed a lawsuit five years ago, charging that they were illegally barred from public housing in Worcester because they were not married. State law prohibits discrimination on the basis of marital status.

The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination ruled in their favor, the Worcester Superior Court upheld that ruling, and the case is pending before the Massachusetts Appeals Court. The housing authority contends that the law protects only individuals--for example, a divorced mother--not couples.

“To open up public housing slots to unmarried couples . . . would create such an enormous strain on a system which is already so badly burdened,” Housing Authority attorney Michael Clancy said.

In West Hollywood, Calif., the first U. S. city in which the majority of officials are homosexuals, a 1985 domestic partnership ordinance guarantees unmarried companions the same rights as married couples.

“If you have a domestic partner, you can’t be evicted if you have someone living with you,” said Deputy City Clerk Vivian Vukojevich. “It can be a gay couple or lesbian couple or a heterosexual couple.”

Sometimes the definition of “family” is intended to circumvent zoning restrictions, as in a bill sought by the Rhode Island Department for Children and Their Families to protect group homes from local opposition.

No legislative action is expected for several weeks on the measure, which says a department-run group home “providing residential care and/or treatment to eight or fewer children residing out of their natural homes shall be considered a family for purposes of zoning.”

In King William County, Va., 23-year-old twin sisters Kim Taylor and Cam Porter, Pamunkey Indians, are gathering signatures from Pamunkey women all over the East Coast on a petition seeking to change a tribal law that bars them from the reservation because they both married white men. Pamunkey men are allowed to marry white women.

Chief William (Swift Eagle) Miles, who supports the sisters’ petition, said when they collect enough signatures, they can request a tribal council meeting on the issue.

Taylor said there was no one she could marry on the reservation “because they’re all girls, or they’re my cousins.”