Overflowing Fairfax Homes Split Neighbors

"There's a lot of people making a lot of money off the backs of desperate people," he said.

The situation on Harry Gault's street, Dana Avenue, illustrates the conflicting stories and perceptions that often swirl around crowding disputes.

Gault and his neighbors complained that the house was noisy. Folks came and went at all hours. Cars jammed the driveway and the street.

Fairfax health and zoning inspectors responded 13 times from 2003 to 2006, according to records. In 2004, officials found that the owner, Raimundo Guevara, had converted the garage to an apartment, a zoning violation. But, inspectors said, everyone there was related to Guevara -- even though there were deadbolt locks on some of the bedroom doors.

The garage apartment was eliminated, but the complaints continued.

Finally, in April 2006, Fairfax police placed the home under surveillance for five days. They found that although lots of people came and went during the day, there was no hard evidence that too many were living there.

"There is innuendo but no factual basis for some of the different allegations," senior zoning inspector W.B. Moncure concluded in a memo in August.

Guevara, a well-known businessman in Springfield's Honduran community, was asked in a brief interview why the house drew so many complaints.

"Bad neighbors," he said.

According to county records, he purchased 6306 Dana four years ago for $260,000 after a series of complaints -- again unsubstantiated, county inspectors said -- about crowding at the house he owns, and lives in, directly across the street at 6305 Dana. In 2002, a Fairfax zoning inspector found 14 people in residence but said 11 of them were related to Guevara.

Gault said inspectors never pressed very hard for proof that all the houses' occupants were family.

"Raimundo would give them a list of names and say they're related," Gault said. "Well, they're all Hondurans and speak Spanish; that's the end of the relationship."

Gault and his wife, Peggy, said the neighborhood of small, single-family houses was not designed for the volume of people who live there. Where evenings on the street were once quiet, they are now filled with music and traffic.

"This is a whole different world at night," she said. "It's difficult to get down the street."

Fairfax Board Chairman Gerald E. Connolly (D) said there is no easy solution.

"Every neighborhood has a clear balance of harmony to it," he said, "and I have some obligation to respect that harmony if I move there. But neighborhoods also have an obligation to expand that harmony to accommodate different cultures."