One Year Later, Debate Still Rages Over Crowding Ordinance : Thousand Oaks: Two contradictory decisions limiting the number of cars allowed at rental homes are fueling the continuing controversy.

A year after implementing an ordinance aimed at cracking down on crowded rental homes, the city of Thousand Oaks continues to wrestle with questions about whether the law is discriminatory or even legal.

Two contradictory decisions by the Planning Commission in recent weeks have only intensified the debate. In one instance, the commission used the ordinance to justify issuing a four-car permit at one rental house only a week after it insisted on a two-car limit at another.

“There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the way it is being enforced,” said Pat Fredericks, president of the Conejo Valley Assn. of Realtors.

Fredericks said the ordinance unfairly restricts renters while allowing homeowners more leeway in terms of parking and other problems associated with crowding.

“It is discriminatory against people who are unable to purchase their own homes,” she said. “If we’re going to have a multiple-occupancy ordinance, it ought to apply to everyone, not just renters.”

The Planning Commission at its meeting today is expected to request that the City Council review the ordinance because of its own conflicts over the parking provisions.

But Mayor Elois Zeanah, who spearheaded efforts to draft the ordinance, said last week that she will ask that the matter be referred back to a code enforcement committee on which she sits.

Zeanah said she firmly stands behind the ordinance, which requires landlords to get a permit when renting single-family homes to four or more adults. It also gives the city power to limit the number of vehicles allowed at rental homes to a maximum of four.

“It’s not a perfect ordinance,” Zeanah said, “but at least it gives us some controls.”

The ordinance was unanimously adopted by the City Council in 1992 after officials were bombarded with complaints from homeowners about parking and traffic problems that they said were caused by a growing number of crowded rental homes.

Zeanah said the ordinance’s parking provisions are especially crucial in cracking down on crowded housing. “If we take that away, we’re in trouble,” she said.

Although he supported the ordinance, Councilman Frank Schillo said he does not believe that the city has the right to restrict parking on private property.

“I think that’s absolutely wrong,” he said. “Just talking from a common sense standpoint, if you’re going to do that to one guy, then you have to do it to all others.”

Planning Commissioner Mervyn Kopp, the only member of the panel to vote against the two-vehicle limit imposed on one property owner, agreed. He said the parking restrictions discriminate against low- to moderate-income residents who are forced to share the same roof with others because they cannot afford higher housing costs.

“To limit the number of people who can live in a home based on the number of cars they have is ludicrous,” said Kopp, a mortgage broker. “How can we have two homes side by side where you allow four cars at one and two cars at the other? The premise is that people don’t need more than two cars if they’re renters.”

City codes now require a 20- to 25-foot front-yard clearance between a house and the curb, which in effect prohibits tandem parking, where one car is parked behind the other, City Atty. Mark Sellers said. The city also discourages parking on the street.

While this allows for vehicles to be parked inside garages, “95% of the community can’t park in their driveways,” he said.

The problem, critics say, is that the law is only being enforced against renters. Last month, the Planning Commission, responding to complaints from neighbors about traffic and parking problems, used the crowding ordinance to prohibit a property owner from renting his Calle Tulipan home to tenants with three or more cars.

Owner Adel Barakat told the commission that the family renting the house has two children and six adults, four of whom drive cars. He said that to limit his tenants to two cars would create a hardship on them since all of them needed their vehicles to get to work.

But half a dozen homeowners complained that traffic and parking problems in the neighborhood had gotten out of hand because of the increasing number of rental homes. They said they feared that their property values were being threatened.

“It’s becoming the slum of Thousand Oaks,” one homeowner said.

With Kopp dissenting, the commission voted 4 to 1 to limit Barakat’s tenants to two vehicles. Barakat said he plans to talk with the owner of an adjacent shopping center about using parking space on that property.

A week after the Barakat decision, the commission granted a rental permit to Eric Springer for his Camino Calandria home, with a condition allowing his tenants four cars. But Springer, who also complained that the city’s parking restrictions were unreasonable, was left with the challenge of finding two other legal parking spaces.

Zeanah said the difference in the two cases is that there is a serious parking and traffic problem in Barakat’s neighborhood and not in Springer’s. “The law is flexible” to enable city officials to decide where restrictions should be imposed, she said.

But Barakat and others say the law should be applied equally, and not just against renters.

“Many of my neighbors have four cars,” said Barakat, whose rental home includes a two-car garage. “I feel the city should enforce it with everyone.”

Fredericks said the city’s crowding ordinance is not needed because the city already has laws to address parking, noise and traffic problems. She said the problem is that these other regulations are not adequately enforced.

“If they had been enforced, there would have been no need for this ordinance,” she said.

Fredericks said she thought that the crowding ordinance would not stand up to a legal challenge. The ordinance specifically requires landlords to set aside at least 300 square feet for each occupant, and restricts dining and living rooms, halls, kitchens and garages from being used as sleeping quarters.

“If it’s ever tested in court, I think the city is going to find itself with the short end of the stick,” Fredericks said. “This is a very difficult ordinance to defend.”

Even Sellers expressed concerns that the law may not be defensible. He said that to his knowledge, no city in California has been successful in upholding a local crowding ordinance in court.

“There isn’t any case we can cite to support it,” he said, adding that he has expressed his concerns about the ordinance to the City Council.

Last year, the state’s 4th District Court of Appeal struck down a Santa Ana ordinance that limited the number of people who could live in an apartment. The city appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case.

Santa Ana City Atty. Edward Cooper said city officials are working to get the state law changed. State law now allows two people for the first 120 square feet of a residence and one person for every additional 50 square feet, he said.

“So under state law, you can have 10 or 12 people living in a one-bedroom apartment,” Cooper said.

Thousand Oaks’ code enforcement chief, Don LaVoie, said that since the city’s ordinance was adopted, he has received 294 complaints about crowding. He said that 214 of the cases have been resolved, and that the remaining cases are either open or are in the process of being settled.

“We’ve had a 73% success rate” without going to court, he said. “It’s worked out real well because of cooperation from residents.”

Kopp said that while he understands that some housing restrictions are needed, he is not sure if this particular ordinance, which he said encourages neighbors to spy on one another, is the right answer.

“I voted to support the ordinance, even though I don’t like it,” he said. “It’s difficult. I don’t know what the answer is. I haven’t come up with any alternatives.”

At the very least, he said, the parking provisions should be changed to give renters the same privileges as homeowners. But Zeanah disagreed, saying rental homes constitute a commercial business and should be treated differently than owner-occupied homes.

Zeanah said Thousand Oaks should not be worried about a possible legal challenge of its crowding ordinance. Even if the ordinance were to be struck down, she said, the city should join the fight to change state laws limiting the ability of cities to control packed housing.

“Families have moved here and settled here because of our safe and quiet neighborhoods,” she said. “It’s our family neighborhoods and family values that are the basis of what Thousand Oaks is. And if we start losing our family standards, it’s going to be the end of what Thousand Oaks stands for.”