Overflowing Fairfax Homes Split Neighbors

Elsa DeLeon, a Honduran immigrant, was cited for overcrowding in February by county inspectors who found that her basement on Hanover Avenue in Springfield had been illegally divided into four bedrooms. She said the county is interfering with her right to care for her large extended family.

"If I buy this house, I can put my family in the basement," she said.

County officials concede that ethnic and racial animus is a factor in some neighborhoods, but those unhappy with the change say that is nonsense. Laws are being broken, and the quality of their lives, they say, has been compromised.

"I'm not an idiot," said Gordon, 37. He said he has complained to county officials about an illegal boarding house of between eight and 10 men in his Falls Church neighborhood of Lakewood for more than a year and a half. Two trucks and as many as nine cars park in front. He said a Fairfax zoning inspector told him that the resident of the house on Birchwood Road probably has "lots of drinking buddies."

Gordon, who works as a homeland security consultant, said it was especially galling when Gross told him that the county's hands were tied. He warned that she might pay a political price in November.

"We're not some right-wing Nazi community," Gordon said. "Everybody is a liberal Democrat. In my community, without a doubt, people will not vote for her unless this problem is solved soon."

In Fairfax and most other Virginia localities, no more than four people unrelated by blood or marriage can live in a single-family home. Families can have no more than two non-members in permanent residence.

But the regulations are more elastic than is generally understood. Occupancy limits are based on the dimensions of certain rooms, not the overall size of a house. Bedrooms used by one person must be at least 70 square feet. Those with two or more people must allow 50 square feet for each occupant. Living rooms have to be a minimum of 150 square feet, dining rooms 100 square feet and kitchens 60.

This means that a three-bedroom suburban house with 1,200 square feet of above-ground living space could legally accommodate more than a dozen people. Immigrant families tend to be large and far more likely to include extended members, such as aunts, uncles and cousins.

The volume of complaints has thrust Fairfax's zoning inspectors, more accustomed to measuring setbacks and fence heights, into the role of determining family relationships in homes where English is often not spoken. Of the county's 21 inspectors -- roughly two for each of the 400-square-mile county's 10 magisterial districts -- only one speaks fluent Spanish. Contract interpreters are available but not always in a timely fashion.

"It is a problem," said Michael R. Congleton, senior deputy zoning administrator.

In cases where the county has clear documentation of overcrowding, Fairfax tries to secure "voluntary compliance" from violators, using a series of written notices. Only a handful of cases are sent to county district court for prosecution, which Kauffman said is part of the problem. The homes' owners, not the occupants, need to be held accountable.