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Title: Immigration fuels housing battles
Source:
USA Today
URL Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation ... overcrowding-immigration_x.htm
Published: Jan 31, 2006
Author: Charisse Jones
Post Date: 2006-01-31 08:16:22 by Zipporah
Keywords: Immigration, housing, battles
Views: 5
Local officials in New York, Virginia, Massachusetts and Georgia have evicted residents, threatened landlords with fines or jail time or legally narrowed the definition of family to combat a problem they say disrupts neighborhoods. (Related: Overcrowding gaining attention in suburbs) "Our focus is on health and safety," says T. Dana Kauffman, a Democratic member of the board of supervisors in Fairfax County, Va., a suburb of Washington. "I've seen crawl spaces turned into bedrooms. ... We've had people tap into gas lines." The board is asking the Virginia Legislature to allow it to punish landlords with up to a year in jail for violating local rules barring more than four unrelated people from living in a single-family home. Some activists say measures limiting the number of unrelated people or extended family members in a home target immigrants, particularly Hispanics, who often need to share a home to afford the rent. "We ... view it as an anti-immigrant issue," says Shanna Smith, president of the Washington-based National Fair Housing Alliance. "You can't have a deed restriction saying, 'No Latinos.' But they're trying to have local ordinances that say immediate families (only). ... Are they going back to the white families to see if a cousin is living there? The answer is no. It truly is directed at the new Latino immigrant population." The dispute comes at a time when states and Congress are debating whether to impose new restrictions on people who entered the USA illegally. The nation has an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Among the hot spots: • In Cobb County, Ga., in suburban Atlanta, commissioners are considering lowering from six to four the maximum number of unrelated people who can live in a single-family home. An influx of immigrants has helped increase the Latino population there from 2.1% in 1990 to 10% in 2004. "We're talking about a small house," Rob Hosack, Cobb County's community development director, says of neighborhood complaints about crowding. "And there's no way to mask the cars with five unrelated people living there." • In Farmingville, N.Y., about 200 tenants, mostly immigrants, were evicted when local officials closed 11 homes last summer. • The City Council in Manassas, Va., last month barred extended family members, such as nieces and nephews, from living together. The council decided to rescind the ordinance after an outcry by civil liberties groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union.
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