Bucks Villa, Inc., a nonprofit corporation, proposed to renovate a residential building zoned R-B Urban Residential in the Borough of New Hope, Pennsylvania, for use as a family group home that would house eight unrelated, HIV-infected adult persons and a residential manager. The residents of the proposed home were to share meals and kitchen and dining facilities or, at their option, cook and eat independently. Common chores in the home, including the maintenance of the home's common areas, were likewise to be shared. The New Hope zoning ordinance defined the term family to mean no more than eight unrelated persons [together with no more than two residential managers]. . . where the residents live together as the functional equivalent of a traditional family[.]
In an appeal by a neighbor challenging the Borough's issuance of a zoning permit for the proposed home, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court concluded that the residents of the group home would live together as the functional equivalent of a traditional family as defined in the zoning ordinance. Even though children would not be raised in the home, the group home in this case would exhibit the characteristics of affection and companionship common to a traditional family. Eichlin v. Zoning Hearing Board of New Hope Borough, ___ Pa. Commw. ___, 671 A.2d 1173 (1996).
Gary Cargill Senior Attorney, Local Government
According to two recent decisions construing the Fair Housing Act (FHA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601-3631, it may be a violation of the FHA to prohibit congregate housing for the disabled in a neighborhood zoned for single-family dwellings, but the FHA does not proscribe a restriction on the number of disabled individuals who may reside in a group home in a single-family residential neighborhood where the applicable zoning code specifically permits congregate housing for the disabled.
In Oxford House-C v. St. Louis, 64 U.S.L.W. 2536 (8th Cir. Feb. 24, 1996), the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals was faced with the issue of whether enforcement of the City of St. Louis Zoning Code to limit to eight the number of residents in two group homes for recovering substance abusers conflicted with the FHA's prohibition against making a dwelling unavailable to handicapped people on the basis of their handicap. The court rejected the City's argument that its restriction on the number of unrelated people who can live together is exempt from the FHA under 42 U.S.C. § 3706(b)(1). The court relied on the recent Supreme Court holding in City of Edmonds v. Oxford House, Inc., 115 S. Ct. 1776 (1995), that the exemption of 3706(b)(1) applied only to total occupancy limits intended to prevent overcrowding in living quarters, not to limits intended to promote the family character of a neighborhood. Nonetheless, the court held that the eight-person limit did not violate the FHA because the zoning code actually favored the handicapped by permitting eight unrelated handicapped people to live together in a single family dwelling while permitting only three unrelated nonhandicapped people to live together in the same dwelling, and because the limit was rationally related to the public interest in decreasing congestion, traffic, and noise in residential areas.
The New Mexico Supreme Court addressed a slightly different issue in Hill v. Community of Damien of Molokai, ___ N.M. ___, 911 P.2d 861 (1996), i.e., whether a covenant restricting the use of a property to a single-family residence enforced against four unrelated individuals suffering from AIDS violated the FHA. While holding that four unrelated residents of a group home constituted a family for purposes of the covenant, the court found that, even if the residents were not a family, enforcement of the covenant would violate the FHA in two ways: (1) enforcement would have a disparate impact on all disabled individuals who need congregate living arrangements in order to live in traditional communities, and (2) enforcement would demonstrate a failure to offer a reasonable accommodation in a situation where nonenforcement would not pose an undue hardship on the neighbors and would not interfere with the plain purposes of the covenant to regulate the structural appearances of houses and to prevent the use of homes for business purposes.
Suzanne L. Bailey
Senior Research Attorney, Civil Rights
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