8’s a Crowd, Renters’ Neighbors Complain to City Leaders : Families: Some residents suggest stricter enforcement of overcrowding law to preserve their area’s ‘integrity.’

Six adults and two children doesn’t seem much like a family to Denise Vivero--at least, not the kind of family she expects as neighbors.

Yet there they are, renting a house on Calle Tulipan, just a short walk from her own home.

Angry at the appearance of large, extended families--and the clutter of cars that comes with a passel of working adults--Vivero on Tuesday joined other Thousand Oaks residents in pleading with the City Council to preserve what they call the neighborhood’s integrity.

Technically, Tuesday’s public hearing focused on one narrow question: whether the six adults and two children should be allowed to keep four cars on the property, two in the driveway and two in the garage.

But a half-dozen residents asked the council to consider a broader issue as well: whether the city should support relatives doubling up in homes to save rent, or whether the overcrowding law should be used to crack down on non-traditional families.

“Obviously, (the landlord) can get a lot more money renting it to six people at a time instead of renting it to a normal--normal meaning average--family unit,” Vivero said. “Please don’t let him do this.”

In the end, the council deadlocked, 2 to 2.

Mayor Elois Zeanah and Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski supported a strict interpretation of the city’s overcrowding and parking laws, which would limit the tenants to two cars, both kept in the garage.

But council members Judy Lazar and Frank Schillo favored allowing the tenants to keep four cars and park in their driveway, like thousands of other residents who routinely disobey an arcane city law requiring cars to be stowed in garages. Both Lazar and Schillo own, or are part owners of, rental properties.

“It is not the business of the council to enforce more stringent restrictions on this property” just because it is a rental unit, Lazar said.

Councilman Alex Fiore, who has in the past expressed sympathy for driveway parking, will cast the deciding vote next week. Fiore left the meeting before the public hearing.

Although it did not reach a ruling Tuesday, the council did hear nearly an hour of testimony about the overcrowding law, which has sparked controversy in several recent test cases.

“The ordinance is designed to maintain integrity in the neighborhood,” Bill Lawrence said. “This was built as a single-family neighborhood.”

To allow some flexibility in the overcrowding ordinance, the council used the term “bona fide housekeeping unit” instead of “family.” Even strangers can qualify as a housekeeping unit, if they prove close bonds based on social, economic or psychological ties.

By this standard, the six adults on Calle Tulipan would qualify as a family--they are all siblings or in-laws, two couples and two single men.

The couples can afford the rent, which tops $1,000 a month for the four-bedroom house, only by pooling their money, landlord Nidal Barakat said. And they can raise cash only by working their jobs--which requires them to keep four cars for transportation, he said.

“If the council says they can’t have four cars, that’s basically telling them to split the family, and I don’t know what they would do,” Barakat said. “These are hard economic times.”

The city has some leverage over the Calle Tulipan property because, as a rental home, it is defined as a commercial use in a residential zone. To accept more than four tenants, the landlord had to obtain a special-use permit--and as one of the conditions, the Planning Commission last year limited the home to two cars.

Several residents urged the council to uphold that restriction, arguing that too many cars would create traffic problems and drive down property values.

But city staff presented a traffic count indicating that repeated surveys found no more than 20 of the street’s 68 spaces were occupied.

Furthermore, City Atty. Mark Sellers warned that a judge might consider it discriminatory for the city to enforce the driveway parking ban only in rental homes.

“You aren’t treating rental units the same as owner-occupied homes, and you’re going to have that as an issue” should someone take the city law to court, Sellers said.