Day-Care Providers Battle Neighbors in Loudoun

By Delphine Schrank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 21, 2007

The nine Russian-chattering youngsters ping-ponging around a Loudoun County back yard were blissfully ignorant of their role in an escalating neighborhood dispute. But the parents who came to collect them one recent evening from the home of Oksana Downs fretted over the prospect of losing their day care for reasons that befuddled them.

Downs is one of a dozen in-home day-care providers accused of violating the rules of the eastern Loudoun subdivision known as Lansdowne on the Potomac -- a charge they call unfair.

The disagreement over those rules reveals tensions that sometimes arise in suburban resort communities between residents who seek to enforce standards for tranquility and exclusivity and others who assert their right to provide a neighborhood service or simply to choose how to live within their own homes. It also highlights the evolving power of homeowners associations as de facto governments in many subdivisions.

"If this gets shut down, we don't know what to do, to tell truth. But we'll just follow Oksana," said Natalya Berengut, a Lansdowne resident, who had come to fetch granddaughters Nicole, 3, and Danielle, 2. "What people tell me doesn't make sense. This is a very nice, children-friendly development, and I hope it's going to still be so."

Jim Lair, a former member of the Lansdowne homeowners association board, replied in a telephone interview: "Come on! We're not against kids. This is not a kids issue. This is about people signing a document and not abiding by it."

Lansdowne, a nearly six-year-old crisscross of broad streets and more than 2,100 houses adjoining a golf course and a strip mall, sits a few miles north of Dulles International Airport among a group of residential communities governed largely by their own covenants and guidelines.

"A lot of people don't understand that when you've moved into an association, you've signed a contractual agreement to abide by its rules," said Frank Rathbun, vice president of communications at the Community Associations Institute, based in Alexandria, which provides resources for homeowners associations nationwide.

Rathbun added, however, that the institute encourages associations to restrict business activities, such as day-care centers, only if they have an adverse effect on the community.

In a similar situation elsewhere this year, residents of Ashburn Farm, near Lansdowne, complained about traffic and safety issues in a cul-de-sac where a homeowner was operating a day care, according to Laura Plummer, president of the Ashburn Farm homeowners association. On May 1, however, the Ashburn association forged a solution that allowed homeowners to provide day care for up to five children, Plummer said, four fewer than the county-permitted maximum. Other local subdivisions, such as the gated community of Belmont Country Club in Ashburn, have stronger prohibitions on day care and other home businesses.

Downs, a native Russian and former preschool teacher, said she had hoped to fill a dearth in Lansdowne when she converted her roomy basement a year ago to care for Russian-speaking children ages 2 to 5. "It's very hard for me now," she said. "I just don't feel it's fair."

A few houses away, day-care provider Heba El-Sharkawi also faces a possible closure. "They think we stuff the house with kids. I can't stuff the house with kids," said El-Sharkawi, who is from Egypt. "I'm certified. I'm following the regulations: nine kids only."

Both women received county licenses to provide day care in their homes, and both said they had also received permission through an earlier version of the Lansdowne association board. E-mails show that El-Sharkawi's husband, Hussein, received conditional approval for a day-care operation from a covenants administrator in August 2005, just before he and his wife moved into their home. He also received confirmation from a Loudoun zoning administrator that the county considers the home day-care operation a residential use of property.

On May 2, however, the association's board of directors voted 3 to 0 to enforce covenants that forbid residents from operating home offices, including day-care centers, unless they meet certain conditions. The vote puts in jeopardy at least 12 day-care centers as the association deliberates a date for their closure. A final decision is expected next month.

Board president Eric Florence said the association has followed its rules and procedures and consulted lawyers on the matter. Board meeting minutes have been made public, he said, and two town hall-style meetings have been held.

Under the covenants, home offices may be allowed if they do not generate traffic, defined as a "significant number of visits . . . by clients, customers or other persons related to the business." (Telecommuters are thereby exempt.)

But traffic, it turns out, is in the eye of the beholder.

"Personally, across the street from me, I have seen nine cars in the morning and nine cars in the evening. I can tell you they're not from Lansdowne," said Jon Fallick, who lives across the street from the El-Sharkawis.

Fallick filed a complaint late last year that set in motion the board's actions. He also co-authored an open letter to the neighborhood that detailed the case against the day-care centers, arguing that they will proliferate if left unchecked and that they will drive down property values.

Day-care providers counter that a few children arriving and leaving over a staggered period of a couple of hours in the morning and evening hardly amounts to a disruption. They circulated a petition in late December in an attempt to save their operations, gathering 170 signatures of support.

They also said they discern an underlying snobbery among their critics. If the day-care providers were accountants or architects, neighbors might be more permissive, Heba El-Sharkawi said. "It's not a classy business."

Washingtonpost.com staff writer Tammi Marcoullier contributed to this report.