CALLANDER: County’s playing big brother

By Alane Callander
For the Stafford County Sun
Published: May 21, 2008

Stafford County is going too far in trying to limit the number of unrelated persons living in a home. What is being considered is an affront to civil rights, and it’s simply illogical.

Stafford currently has no restriction on the number of unrelated persons that can live in a residential dwelling, and it has no definition of “family” in its zoning ordinance.

However, county officials are now considering a definition of “family” as “a group of people living together as a single housekeeping unit and consisting of: (1) one person; or (2) two or more persons related by blood, adoption, or marriage, together with any number of offspring, foster, step or adopted children; or (3) a group of three unrelated persons living and cooking together as a single housekeeping unit though not related by blood, marriage, adoption or guardianship, provided that the limitation on the number of unrelated persons shall not apply to residents in a housekeeping unit by persons having handicaps…..” (as defined by the Code of Virginia). Virginia Department of Social Services regulations also apply to specific circumstances.

My view is that situations arise in today’s world that don’t fit neatly into those categories.

Example 1: A man and woman, unmarried, decide to live together and bring their two separate families together. The man may have two children and the woman may have three children, together several unrelated people in one household. Is it the government’s place to tell these people they should not live under one roof?

Example 2: Four single people decide to rent a house together to save on costs. They exceed the three unrelated persons threshold. The house they live in has four bedrooms and three bathrooms, certainly roomy enough for four single people.

Example 3: A family of five is displaced from their home because of foreclosure. They have nowhere to go. A friend is kind enough to invite them to come live with her until such time as the family can afford to get back out on its own.

Example 4: An elderly man with no nearby family asks a family of four unrelated to him to come and live in his home and watch over him. The arrangement allows him to remain there rather than go to a nursing home, and it provides shelter to a family that would otherwise live in a cramped apartment.

According to my understanding of the proposed ordinance, the above arrangements would not be allowed. It seems to be government butting into one’s personal lifestyle choices.

At a time of growing financial struggles, it’s particularly insensitive of our county government to impose itself in limiting unrelated persons living together to no more than three.

Rumblings are that this is a means for limiting immigrants from inhabiting houses in Stafford. The impression is that a number of unrelated Hispanics, for example, board in single-family homes in the county, load up driveways and adjacent roadways with numerous cars, and burden our school system.

Members of the Board of Supervisors, we are told, get calls from complaining citizens about too many people living in houses. A lot of people are wondering, is it really overcrowding that concerns the callers or is it the race or ethnicity of those residents? Let’s not discriminate against people because of how they look or speak.

It’s ironic that in this county with so many oversized homes the supervisors are concerned about how many residents live in a house.

The proposed ordinance doesn’t say that only a certain number of people can live in a three-bedroom home; it pertains to all single-family homes, regardless of size.

It’s amusing that the ordinance refers to “housekeeping” and “cooking.” Maybe this is commonplace in the world of zoning ordinances, but I’m not sure of the relevance today.

If someone doesn’t cook at home, then is that person exempted? What if the resident doesn’t do housekeeping, just sleeps at the home and leaves the housekeeping to the owner or other residents or to a housekeeping service, is he or she then exempted?

Our county government should stop playing big brother on this one.

Alane Callander is a south Stafford resident active in many local causes. Reach her at .