Agenda - Planning Commission - 09/05/1995

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In a seminal decision on zoning ordinances that limit occupancy in single-family zones to related individuals, the Court in Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U.S. I (1974), upheld as constitu- tional a local ordinance that defined family as "one or more persons related by blood, adoption, or marriage" or up to two unrelated persons "living together as a single housekeeping unit." The court was unsympathetic to the equal protection, right- to-travel, and right-of-privacy claims of six unrelated college students leasing a house in the village. It found the ordinance reasonably related to the legitimate governmental purpose of preserving family values. Although the Court's family needs rationale for upholding the validity of such ordinances can easily be construed as a legitimate means of excluding certain groups from residential communities, the ordinance must be reasonably related to furthering this family values goal. Intrusion into the freedom to make "choices concerning family living arrangements" requires careful examination of the governmental interests advanced and the extent to which they are served by the zoning regulation. [See Moore v. City of East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494 (1977) (where the Court invalidated a zoning ordinance that limited its definition of family to the nuclear family, which effectively made it unlawful for th.e plaintiffto .. reside in the same house with her grandson).] . Cig of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center. Instead of limiting the number of unrelated individuals who can live together, some zoning ordinances require a special use permit to establish a group home. These provisions ordinarily will safeguard the ordinance against facial challenge because they provide an administrative mechanism for a special use applicant to secure approval by meeting certain conditions. Denial ora special use permit, however, must also be premised on legitimate zoning concerns. [See Baxter v. CiO, of Belleville, 720 F. Supp. 720 (S.D. Ill. I989); Davis County v. Clearfield City, Utah, 82 Utah Adv. Rep. 38, 756 ?.2d 704 (1988).] In Cleburne, 105 S. Ct. 3249 (1985), the U.S. Supreme Court had the opportunity to rule on the denial ora special use permit to establish a group home for the mentally retarded in a multiple- dwelling zone. The group home showed that the ordlnance's special use permit provision, as applied, was discriminatory, In its equal protection challenge, the group home demonstrated that the mentally retarded as a group would not threaten any of the city's legitimate interests in a way different from other uses not subject to the requirement. The Court specifically denounced governmen- tal concerns for negative attitudes and fears of neighboring property owners and elderly residents as improper justification for denying the permit, ruling that such neighborhood fears alone cannot sanction discrimination against the handicapped. The impact of Cleburneon zoning regulation is limited to situations where zoning ordinances, as applied, discriminate based on "irrational. prejudice against the mentally retarded." The decision does not prohibit the use of special permit mechanisms by local zoning bodies, nor did it disturb the court's earlier approval in Belle Terre of reasonable ordinance definitions on what constitutes a family for purposes of living arrangements in single-family zones. State Court Challenges State courts generally have applied tougher standards, and challengers there have been far more successful. As a general rule, Mark Dennison is an attarney in private practice in Ridgewaod, New Jersey. He is the author of numerous books and articles on zoning, land-use, and environmental law issues. plaintiffs attacking the reasonableness of single-family restrictions must prove that the restriction advances no reasonable governmental interest or that the ordinance is unreasonable because of the purely arbitrary, capricious, and unfounded exclusion of various other nontraditional family groups. Definitions that limit relationships in the family to those of blood or adoption have been found overly restrictive. ISee Matter of Genesis of Mount Vernon, N. Y., /nc. v. Zoning Board of Appeals of the City of Mount Vernon, 152 Misc.2d 997, 579 N.Y.S,2d 968 (Sup. Ct. 199 I).] Occupancy restrictions based generally on the biological or legal relationships between inhabitants often have been found to bear no reasonable relationship to the declared goals of single-family zoning, such as reducing parking and traffic problems, controlling population density, and preventing noise and disturbance. [McMinn v. Town of Oyster Bay, 66 N.Y.2d 544,498 N.Y.S.2d 128,488 N.E.2d 1240 (1985).] Generally, the key inqui~ will be determining whether the excluded group will be considered a functionally equivalent family. In a leading case, Ci{y of White Plains v. Ferraioli, the city contended that a group home consisting of a married couple living with two of their own children and 10 foster children was not a family, but either a philanthropic institution, allowed only by a special permit, or a boarding house wholly excluded from a single-family residential zone. New York's highest court, however, disagreed. Distinguishing the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Belle Terre, it stated: lain ordinance may restrict a residential zone to occupancy by stable families occupying single-family homes, but neither by express provision nor construction may it limit the definition of family to exclude a household which in every but a biological sense is a single family. The minimal arrangement to meet the test ora zoning provision, as this one, is a group headed by a householder caring for a reasonable number of children as one would be likely to find in a biologically unitary family. [34 N.Y.2d at 306, 313 N.E.2d at 758-59, 357 N.Y.S.2d at 453.] In this situation, all children in the household lived together as brothers and sisters with common parentk. Importantly, the stability of this group stood in contrast to the transiency of the group of unrelated college students in Belle Terre. Thus, the court determined that, as long as the excluded group bore the generic character of a family unit as a relatively permanent household, and was not a framework for transients or transient living, it would be found to conform to the ordinance's purpose. Courts in Colorado, Missouri, New Jersey, Michigan, and Pennsylvania have followed this reasoning to invalidate zoning that excludes group homes and functional families from residential areas. Similarly, courts in Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Montana, Rhode Island, and Tennessee have negated local government efforts to exclude group homes based on their purported institutional or commercial nature by concluding that shared housekeeping activities and supervision by surrogate parents equates the group to a single housekeeping unit, Still, some states have relied on factors such as the residents' transiency, the absence ora permanent head of household, and the economic gain to the operators to place group homes and alternative living arrangements outside the scope of permitted occupancy under ordinance definitions of family. Preempting State Statute In some states, the siting of group homes in single-family zones has been upheld on the basis of overriding state policy and by