I've heard no end of rediculous things this year, but this, well...
The inspector slid into his Crown Victoria, a police radio on his belt, addresses in hand. It was after 5 p.m., and he and his interpreter rolled into Manassas, down a street of benign ranch houses strung with lights. They parked, walked to a door and knocked.
"Mrs. Chavez?" Victor Purchase asked in the quiet evening.
There had been a complaint, he said. The city needed to know not just how many people lived there but how they were related. He handed Leyla Chavez a form and explained that she could be prosecuted for lying.
"Okay," she said and, in a mild state of shock, began filling it out.
There was Chavez and her husband. Their two sons. A nephew. The man who rented downstairs. His girlfriend.
"Your nephew, under our law, is considered unrelated," Purchase said, then delivered the verdict: Two people had to go.
That is because a zoning ordinance adopted this month by the city of Manassas redefines family, essentially restricting households to immediate relatives, even when the total is below the occupancy limit.
The rule, which has alarmed civil libertarians and housing activists, is among a series of attempts by municipalities across the nation to use zoning powers to deal with problems they associate with immigrants, often illegal, who have settled in suburbs, typically in shared housing to help with the rent or mortgage.
"It is not only unfair; it's racism," said Edgar Rivera, an organizer with Tenants and Workers United, a Northern Virginia group that advocates affordable housing as a solution to overcrowding. "It's basically a way to just go after certain communities."
The family in the example above? Homeowners who are now going to be priced out of the market. In a time of sagging home sales, shouldn't that concern people, if nothing else about this story does?
"It isn't just too many people in the house," said Manassas Vice Mayor Harry J. "Hal" Parrish II. "It's impacting parking on the streets. It's impacting the hospital and its costs, our emergency services, our schools to a great extent."
Parrish said he understands why some people might think the ordinance is racist, but he disagrees. "In my heart, I believe that is not the issue," he said. "The issue is the impact of overcrowding in our community. It looks as though that issue is a direct result of illegal immigration."
But Chavez and her husband, Juan, are U.S. citizens. They came from Honduras in the 1980s, worked more than one job -- she at two laundromats, he as a cook -- and eventually saved enough to buy the house on Liberia Avenue in 2003 for $270,000.
Now, faced with the loss of rental income and with a $3,500 monthly mortgage to pay, Chavez said, they are going to sell. The family will never buy a house again, she said.
Chavez, who has two nephews in the military who served in Iraq, said she could understand having some kind of rule against overcrowding.
"When it's 20 or 30 people, when there are drinkers, drugs, I say yes," she said.
Considering, though, that every house on her block more or less resembles hers, and considering that she has only seven people living in a five-bedroom house, she was suspicious about why she was singled out. As far as she knew, she and her husband were just doing what any normal family would do to make it.
"Americans live that way, too," Chavez said. "They have roommates."
Damn right. I had my cousin living with me part-time for 1 1/2 years. Under this ordinance, she would have had to find someplace else to stay. Of course we're both white so the city would have turned a blind eye.
Hopefully the small-c conservatives will notice things are going too far. But probably not.
This is the Bush Countdown Clock. I was in Bookshop Santa Cruz last week, and they had a bin of these by the cash registers. I bought one for a friend, who has been proudly sporting it on her keychain ever since. She did experience one tense encounter in a shop in Berkeley, where another customer spat, "How can you stand to look at him!" My friend suggested she take a closer look, and all was forgiven.
