Anthony, while I fully agree with your overall point, I'm not sure your analogy is valid.

My mother was a "Golden Girls" addict and I used to watch it with her all the time. On that show, two of the characters, Sophia and Dorothy, were mother and daughter, blood relations. Therefore, there were only two, not four, unrelated women living in that apartment, which would presumably be legal under this law as you present it. At most, even if you took it as referring to the relationships of any tenant, not just the actual owner/renter (Dorothy, if I remember my GG history correctly), only two of the four could be cited as being in a living situation in which they lived with three other unrelated people.

In any case, I fully support what you're doing here. Best of luck in your campaign, we need more like you out there!

Wonderful post Anthony, and very on point. Now, I am in a questioning mood. How many gay or straight couples can you find who are in "violation" of this local ordinance who have been approved to have two unrelated foster children allowed Florida statute?

You are a lawyer, obviously you can demonstrate that this is an ordinance in conflict with Florida State Approved foster children rules.

Can we drag the "Golden Girls" out of retirement?

Did you know, that in some states, it was against the law for a woman to take more than three steps backward when dancing?

Wishing you and Waymon all the best!

Rebecca, I completely forgot that they were mother and daughter. I guess you will have to take my gay card away! The problem, even with that situation, is that the moment they have someone live there for any period of time (unless they are also related to someone in the house), they would violate the law because it would have four unrelated people in the house.

I looked at several ordinances across the country to give my city some good examples, but I was shocked at how uniform these ordinances were. Some limited the homes to 2,3, or 4 unrelated individuals, but almost all defined "related" to only include marriage, blood or adoption.

Robert-Being part of the foster system as parents, I can guarantee you that the system does not look at these laws when placing children. I think they are just happy to have a placement in some cases (especially if they are good parents or the kids are hard to place) that zoning laws don't even cross their radar screen.

I have met many same sex couples that have multiple foster children, so they would violate our current law. In fact, most foster parents I have met have more than one child.

I think some cities purposely left out foster kids because they did not want homes with lots of foster kids. I have heard people and cities complain about foster homes because they think these kids are undesirable neighbors.

I am happy to report that my city just agreed to rewrite these zoning laws to be more inclusive, so they will include domestic partners, unmarried couples, foster children, and the whole gambit of relationships.

My goal was to get my city and others to start modernizing their codes to really reflect the wide range of families we have in our cities and towns across the US.

I can back up what Anthony said. Most of the foster parents we met along the way had multiple children in their care. Even a married straight couple with 3 foster children would have been breaking the law.

Whether the law was ever really enforced or not, having it on the books implies that certain kinds of families are not welcome.

And Rebecca, I will be sure to take Anthony's gay card away for his Golden Girls mix-up. I think we will have to have a marathon to catch him up. sigh...

What's the consequences of breaking this law? Does it mean that your family is not eligible for certain things? Are you only allowed one "family" per housing unit?

Essentially, these ordiances are used to determine who can live in a single family house. The consequences will be different in each city, but most cities will give the house a code violation. Code violations lead to fines, which lead to liens on the house. These can add up to a large sum very quickly in some towns. The goal would be to get the family to move or to change the make-up of the household.

The problem is that it allows the city to take action against a family it does not like just to have them move. I can envision a city manager/mayor that does not like gay or lesbian individuals and using the code against them. Everyday we seem to see officials doing these types of things to our community.

So are you saying that anything more than a three-way would be illegal?

I kid! Great post, Anthony. Good luck getting the law changed. And thank God Waymon is there to keep you in line! The GG snafu was just unconscionable.

A wise course of action, Anthony. Will there be other hearings or does this ordinance automatically go into effect immediately?

Thanks for guest posting. Good luck with your campaign! I've added the campaign as a friend on Facebook!

Dear Mr/Mrs Hudson-Niedwiecki, or
Niedwiecki-Hudson

I had to do that, I am evil. My point (in comment #4) is that I believe the state rule of placement of kids in foster homes invalidates the city ordinance on it's face. It is null and voided, much like putting a warrantee for a Volkswagon air filter in a Mercedes. It strikes me that if this has the slightest nudge it would fall under it's own weight.

Fruit of the poisonous tree (nothing personal, I just love the world fruit!).

In that you are condemned to televison watching for a while, to get your gay card back, I thought to ask:

"What do you think of that professor?"

"Well, the Howells won't like the idea at all"

"But Mary Anne and I want to jump each others bones."

"So what the heck it's Gilligan's island anyway!"

we have a similar law on the books here in Indianapolis - and it came up recently on a discussion of my neighborhood mailing list - The Old Northside. If I'm not mistaken, our law prohibits 3 unrelated people living together.

People in the neighborhood were upset that someone had rented their house to 3 guys, and deciding it might be three college guys who would party late at night (Gee, stereotype much?) they were going to invoke this little-known city ordinance.

I spoke out against it on the list, pointing out that the law discriminates against families that don't fit the regular description. They backed off, and the guys moved in. Since I haven't heard any discussion later, I guess they must be nice and quiet.

Steph, this was my point of hours ago. I cannot imagine how this local ordinance is enforceable when State law would predominate. Firstly, you would have to empty out about half the shared apartments in all college towns, but more importantly, if the state sanctions child placement it overrides a local ordinance.

The way state and local laws interact will depend on the laws of each state. With that being said, municipalities are generally given broad rights to manage their own zoning laws, even if they conflict with some other state law that is not about zoning (although a state law about zoning would trump). So I don't think the foster care laws would invalidate zoning laws. Instead, it is likely that a court would limit that the application of the zoning law under the particular circumstances. The foster care laws probably could not be used to wipe out the zoning law completely.

Bil- the commission agreed to put on the next agenda in two weeks a proposed ordinance that eliminates the definition of who is considered related. It will allow the city attorney to later develop more broad rules that encompass all family structures and relationships.