Parents, kids not necessarily 'family' everywhere

[rodeodance]

commonsense does not seem to be a factor here.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060516/ts_usatoday/parentskidsnotnecessarilyfamilyeverywhere;_ylt=Aut.NSh1dVC_qpqtEo4A4e6s0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-
Parents, kids not necessarily 'family' everywhere

By Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY 18 minutes ago

When Olivia Shelltrack saw the yellow house with green shutters, she loved it right away. It had a yard, a deck, a finished basement and five bedrooms - plenty of space for Shelltrack, her partner of 13 years, Fondray Loving, and their three children. It was in their price range.
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But the house is in Black Jack, Mo., where anyone moving into a house must get a permit of occupancy. When Shelltrack and Loving went to get theirs, the city said no.

Black Jack prohibits more than three unrelated people from living together. City officials ruled that Shelltrack and Loving, who are not married, and the three kids, one of them Shelltrack's from a previous relationship, fit that description.

"This ordinance is outdated. We are a family," says Shelltrack, 31. "There's a mom, there's a dad, there's three children. We are a family." Whether Shelltrack, a stay-at-home mom, and Loving, 33, who works for a payroll-administration company, are married "should not be anybody's business, if I pay my taxes, if I'm able to buy the house," she says.

[oscar111]

1. "INTERNAL PASSPORT" is the term used overseas

i have seen that term used by some nations that control inner movement of citizens.

[oscar111]

2. Zoning.. by house price, is also an INTERNAL PASSPORT

in my view.

Zoning by house price, has always struck me as highly repressive. It clearly gives advantage to the rich and mistreats all others.

highly un-democratic.

[rodeodance]

7. interesting concept. Yes, it could be applicable to this ( a rose by any

other name).

[Minnesota Libra]

3. This is plain wrong, I could see them doing a .....................

....background check on EVERYONE (straight or not) to weed out drug dealers, child molesters, etc., but this is plain wrong.

Everyone, please forgive ignorance and my lack of pc correctness but I totally admire many gay couples for adopting/raising disabled or "unadaptable" kids who would otherwise never know a loving home. As it is some of these kids, who no one else wants, know love, they know acceptance, they learn how to fish, they learn how to hug, they learn how to value themselves.

This crap is just not right.:grr:

[Boomer]

4. Thanks for the sentiment but...

this is not a specifically gay issue. The couple who was denied the house are straight, just not married to each other.

[LostinVA]

5. And they are also an interracial couple n/t

[Minnesota Libra]

6. That's why I said EVERYONE - a "family" isn't always married to...........

....each other and that's just a fact of our modern society. That should NOT bar them from buying a home unless there is something criminal involved that would rightfully bar anyone from a family neighborhood. So the same sentiment applies with a unmarried straight couple as with anyone else.

[rodeodance]

8. another form of a 'virtual fence" ?

...Now, under threat of a lawsuit from the
American Civil Liberties Union and an investigation by the federal
Department of Housing and Urban Development, the city is set to vote today to broaden the law just enough to allow the Shelltrack-Loving household to live in town.

"It's nothing unusual to have these particular type of laws. Basically it's to prevent overcrowding," Mayor Norman McCourt says. Legislating morality, he says, "was never the intention."

Nationally, definitions of "family" in zoning laws are widespread and are generally designed to prevent fraternity houses and boarding houses in single-family neighborhoods. Black Jack city attorney Sheldon Stock says more than 80 of the 91 municipalities in St. Louis County, which surrounds the city of St. Louis, have similar restrictions.

Few enforce them, however, says Tony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri. "We're not aware of any other city that has recently tried to deny an occupancy permit to a family," he says. "It's been happening in Black Jack a couple times a year."

[mzteris]

9. Does this mean

- *Black Jack prohibits more than three unrelated people from living together.** -

that they have can have no more than one FOSTER CHILD per household in that state?

[HuffleClaw]

10. i can't see this being remotely legal

and the fact they just happen to be an interracial couple is more than a tad suspect.

[rodeodance]

11. it is legislating a preferred form of 'morality' .

....In 1999, an unmarried couple with 3-year-old triplets, Duane Carpenter and Doris McKinney, were denied an occupancy permit in the town. "The easiest resolution to cure the situation would be for them to get married," McCourt wrote to the ACLU at the time. "Our community believes this is the appropriate way to raise a family."

In 1986, a Missouri appeals court upheld a similar law in Ladue, an affluent St. Louis suburb, after it was challenged by Joan Kelly Horn and partner Terrence Jones, who lived there two years with seven children from previous marriages before the city ordered them out.

"It was, 'Get married or move out,' " says Horn, who later served in Congress in 1991 and 1992. "We were both pretty appalled." The couple married in 1987 - on their own timetable, Horn says. They divorced in 1999.

Missouri housing laws, like those of at least 18 other states, do not prohibit discrimination based on marital status.

[Igel]

12. A fair number of municipalities have this kind of

restriction. Most of them don't require a permit of occupancy, though. A lot of landlords have standard leases that prohibit the same thing.

The reason has nothing to do with sexuality, or race, or religion, or even food preferences. At least in most cases.

There are two possible reasons, quite related.

The first is to keep lots of single people from joining forces and moving into a house or apt., treating it as a kind of barracks or dorm. Sometimes they're college kids, sometimes immigrants, sometimes some other group. Seldom do they maintain the property (or property values), and frequently they have far greater propensity to be problem neighbors.

The second is to keep owners from running a boarding house.

I wonder if there's a way to rewrite the laws to ban dorms and boarding houses, but not to exclude Shelltrack et al.?

[Nikia]

13. But they are only two unrelated people

The mother is related to the children. That is consider one family that is all related. The man is related to some of the children but not the other or the mother. I count only two unrealted people.
How isn't this a violation of fair housing laws which say that you cannot be discriminated against for having children. Presumingly if they did not have children, the couple could live together.
These are laws are stupid anyway. There are several reasons why multiple unrelated people might want to live together. In some housing markets, this might even be necessary for low wage workers. As long as they aren't causing a problem or living in a very small space for the amount of people living there, they should be allowed to live with people regardless of their relationship with them.

[Rich Hunt]

14. what kind of lying weaselly bullshit is THIS?

Leave it to creepy backward Missouri, where some people think everyone should live by their medieval laws.....

F.O. fascists.

[JPZenger]

15. Misinterpreted Their Own Ordinance

As noted above, this type of provision is common in local zoning ordinances, but was mis-interpreted by this town.

A maximum of 3 or 4 unrelated persons living together is designed to prevent houses in residential neighborhoods from becoming boarding houses.

If there was one adult and his/her children living with a second adult and his/her children, that should be only 2 unrelated persons. Everyone else is related. No other municipality interprets this provision the way this town does. I know, I write zoning ordinances.

In answer to a question above, most ordinances consider foster children to be the same as being related.