Immigrant Homebuyers See Bias Against Relatives Sharing The Same Roof

ELGIN, Ill. -- Ted and Brigid Trimble say they were happy when Jose Deanda, a Mexican immigrant, moved in next door four years ago. The house had been vacant for a year. Mr. Deanda and his wife had a small child with a baby on the way, potential playmates for the Trimbles' boys.

Then the Trimbles discovered how Mr. Deanda was paying the mortgage for the small two-family house. Downstairs was Mr. Deanda's immediate family of four. The two-bedroom flat upstairs housed his mother, two brothers, a sister and sister-in-law. Five men Mr. Deanda said were his nephews moved into the basement. Though zoned for six people, the home contained 14.

The Trimbles complained to Mr. Deanda about loud music blaring from the house and cars being fixed in the driveway. Mr. Deanda said the Trimbles' dog barked all the time. The Trimbles told housing inspectors that Mr. Deanda's house was overcrowded. Mr. Deanda said that if the police bothered him, he would file a discrimination lawsuit. The Trimbles put up a wooden fence.

In a time-honored American tradition, Hispanic immigrants are often doubling up and pooling resources to buy homes. But unlike earlier generations of immigrants who packed together in urban tenements, many Hispanics are heading straight to suburban communities, looking for better schools and safer streets. They are aided by real-estate agents eager to tap into the fast-growing Hispanic housing market and by banks and mortgage companies looking to boost their lending to minorities.

But the immigrants' drive for upward mobility is clashing with the suburban ideal of quiet streets and single-family homes, and in some places opening up a racially charged class war.

"Some people have this attitude, 'It's my house and I can do whatever I want,' " says Mrs. Trimble, who plans to go back to school and become an elementary-school teacher. "But when that happens, you no longer have a community -- you have a very unfriendly neighborhood."

On the other side of the fence, Mr. Deanda, a supervisor at a furniture factory, says: "I like to get along with everyone, but you can't do that with some people. Some people don't like Hispanic people." Besides, he says, "I'm not going to throw my mom and brother on the street."

The Virginia Senate last year passed a bill permitting Fairfax County, which was seeing an influx of Hispanic families, to ban sleeping in any room except bedrooms. The bill was subsequently withdrawn amid charges that it was anti-immigrant. Rolling Meadows, another Chicago suburb, changed the definition of "family" in its zoning code to reduce the number of unrelated adults who can legally live together in a single family home to three from four.

Here in Elgin, an old industrial town outside Chicago that has seen its fortunes improve in recent years, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development charges that local housing inspectors are discriminating against Hispanic homeowners and renters. The agency says inspectors are conducting predawn raids looking for overcrowded conditions, but they disproportionately target Hispanics with relatives or others living in converted basements and attics. "Guilt ... is often assumed" by Elgin housing inspectors when dealing with Hispanics, concludes a HUD report issued in August 2000. The Justice Department's civil-rights division is reviewing 23 housing-discrimination complaints by Hispanics against the city and could decide to sue Elgin over its alleged mistreatment of Hispanic residents. The city and federal officials are meeting to try to resolve the dispute.

But where HUD and many Hispanics see discrimination, Elgin city officials and many white residents say enforcing housing codes is necessary to ensure health and safety. Fires are a threat when houses are overcrowded or basements and attics lack a quick means of escape. In 1995, a three-year-old boy and his parents died when fire raced through their Elgin basement apartment, which had only one exit. Codes can also help neighborhoods from decaying and property values from declining.

"If I'm going to sink $30,000 into my house, I want to know my neighborhood is going to stay nice," says Sheri Buttstadt, who is renovating her house in one of Elgin's reviving historic neighborhoods. "If you can barely afford the mortgage, you don't have money to fix the roof or the screen door."

Hispanics lead the surge of immigrants seeking homes in the suburbs. The most popular surname among home buyers in California in 2000 was Garcia -- joined in the state's top 10 by Lopez, Martinez, Hernandez, Rodriguez and Gonzalez. More than 41% of the immigrant population in the Chicago area now lives in the suburbs, up from 33% in 1970. Hispanics are flocking to suburbs like Elgin because they offer service jobs in hotels and restaurants and other job opportunities such as landscaping.

Banks and mortgage lenders, under pressure from the Community Reinvestment Act, are boosting loans to low- and moderate-income home buyers, especially striving immigrants. Five years ago, World Savings & Loan, a unit of Golden West Financial of Oakland, Calif., started opening branches in the suburbs around Chicago. The bank established a special "community loan program" targeted at low-income minorities.

Last year, Lee Ann McLaughlin, a loan officer who serves Elgin, approved more than 200 loans to low-income minorities, up from 22 five years earlier. Three-quarters were to Hispanics pooling resources to buy homes, say Ms. McLaughlin. She says her foreclosure rate hasn't changed, remaining "well below" 1%.

Ms. McLaughlin recently approved a loan for a two-bedroom condominium that will house eight people. She discounts complaints by some whites in Elgin that the eagerness of mortgage lenders and real-estate agents to land Hispanic clients is fostering overcrowding.

"The more affluent we become, we tend to forget where we came from," she says, "I grew up in a four-bedroom farmhouse in Ohio with my grandparents, my mother, two uncles, a brother and a sister."

After 11 years renting an apartment behind a Chinese restaurant in Duarte, Calif., Maximiliano Garcia moved into a four-bedroom, $150,000 house in a nicer residential area of the Los Angeles suburb. The mortgage is $1,200 a month, yet the 65-year-old Mexican immigrant earns just $300 a month collecting returnable bottles and cans.

As night falls and people come home from work, the economics of the Garcia household become clear. A young factory worker, his wife and their two young girls stop by the kitchen to get a snack. They rent two rooms at the back of the house. Mr. Garcia's 22-year-old son, Javier, who sells truck accessories, rents a bedroom off the living room. Another immigrant factory worker slips wordlessly past the bouquet of artificial red roses on the living-room coffee table into the bedroom next to Javier's. Finally, there's Maria Nevin, who peddles American clothes across the border in Mexico. She sleeps on an air mattress in the living room. Nine people live in Mr. Garcia's four-bedroom house. Everyone pays cash to Mr. Garcia, who gives the money to another son, a worker in a salvage yard, who then writes a check to the mortgage company.

"If everyone was separate, there would be no house," says Mr. Garcia with a smile.

Such arrangements don't trouble Duarte city officials in this racially mixed city. They say it's common for Hispanic homeowners to rent out rooms to relatives and strangers to meet the mortgage. "It's a traditional way of reaching homeownership," says Duarte city planner Steven Sizemore.

But in Elgin, the influx of Hispanics doubling-up is pitting neighbor against neighbor, whites against Hispanics.

An old industrial town northwest of Chicago, Elgin declined in the 1970s and 1980s. Starting in the 1990s, housing prices rose, prompted by a renewed interest in Elgin's many historic homes and a downtown renaissance aided by the opening of a riverboat casino in 1994. The city expanded its housing-code enforcement division to eight staffers from two and began cracking down on violations more vigorously.

At the same time, Hispanic home-buyers began flocking to the city, drawn by relatively low home prices and plentiful service jobs. Since 1990, Elgin's population has increased by 10,000 to 95,000. The proportion of Hispanic residents has grown from 19% to 34%. Hispanic homeowners say housing officials have applied the local codes much more vigorously to them than to white homeowners.

Three years ago, Jose Lara and his wife bought a three-bedroom home in one of Elgin's neighborhoods, attracted by the two bedrooms the previous, white owner had added in a converted basement. Mr. Lara installed a bathroom in the spacious attic, carpeted the floors and invited his sister-in-law and two nephews to move into the attic. "My house is open to my relatives," he says. "I give them a helping hand."

Eight months later, after a complaint from a white neighbor, Elgin housing inspectors came by at 6 a.m. and declared that the bedrooms in both attic and basement violated city building standards -- the ceiling was three inches lower than allowed in the basement and the attic stairway was too small for a safe exit. The bathrooms and some electrical wiring had also been installed without proper permits. Mr. Lara's relatives moved out.

At night, Mr. Lara says, he sometimes goes up to his now vacant attic, looks out the window and sees the attics of white neighbors with people sleeping inside.

"The city doesn't want Latinos," says Mr. Lara. "I see my white neighbors sleeping in their attics. Why can't I use my attic?" He says he'd consider leaving Elgin, but his wife has family here.

Elgin city officials say they don't discriminate between Hispanic and white homeowners and are simply enforcing national housing codes. "It's a public health and safety issue," says the city's corporation counsel, William Cogley. Inspectors tend to find out about violations through complaints of neighbors, city officials say.

The Trimbles know about the code issues. When they bought their Prairie-style house 14 years ago for $76,000, it was advertised as a five-bedroom house. But two of those bedrooms were in the basement and so violated housing codes. The Trimbles converted the basement rooms to a family room and workshop, redid the kitchen, installed new electricity and plumbing and stripped much of the paint to reveal period details. They estimate their house today is worth $150,000.

The Trimbles say they moved to Elgin because they wanted an affordable suburban neighborhood that wasn't all white. "We didn't want our kids growing up in an unreal world," Mrs. Trimble says. At the time, the neighborhood was predominantly white, with a smattering of blacks and Hispanics. Over the years, more and more Hispanics have moved in, and the Trimbles say their neighborhood is now filled with large Hispanic families and illegal boarders who crowd the streets with cars and significantly increase the amount of traffic on the street.

But the crime rate in Elgin has dropped 36% since 1995. Far from depressing housing prices, real-estate agents say the Hispanic demand has contributed to an overall rise. In the third quarter of 2001, housing prices in Elgin jumped 9.3% from the year-earlier period, more than twice the rate for Illinois as a whole. The value of their house has doubled since the Trimbles bought it in the 1980s.

"I'm not prejudiced," says Mr. Trimble, a mechanic with United Air Lines. "I just expect everyone to play by the same rules."

Banks and government-backed mortgage programs "are giving mortgages to people who can't afford them," says Mrs. Trimble. "It's gotten to the point where some people see owning a house as a right. But it's a privilege to own a house, not a right."

Mr. Deanda agreed to stop renting out his basement soon after housing inspectors came to his house. A few months later, one of his upstairs brothers bought his own house a few blocks away and took his mother and other relatives to live with him and help with the mortgage. The upstairs apartment is now occupied by another brother and his wife.

Mr. Deanda reckons that his house, which he bought for $96,000, has appreciated in value to $150,000 in the past four years. He just expanded a downstairs bedroom to accommodate his new baby, born in September. With the two relatives upstairs, the baby puts the house at its legal occupancy limit of six. Mr. Deanda says he would welcome other relatives to move in if they needed his help.

I live in the Southwest and I can see this happening, so five years ago I moved from an apartment in the downtown area to buying my own small patio home in the suburbs.

As I see the creeping third-world-ism coming this way, I have checked out the most popular active retirement communities. One percent minorities and an age limit, no one under 55 in some cases and 65 in others.

I thank God I have an alternative, but my plan won't work for younger FReepers, which is unfortunate. I would love to have a neighborhood full of FReepers (no matter what color or ethnicity) and live in a quiet and safe neighborhood!

"I don't care what race my neighbors are, but I want to live amongst people who share my work ethic, my values, and my standards of what a good neighbor is!"

This is also true of me. And lest someone decide I'm terribly bigoted against people of other races, I should mention that one of the battles our little town is fighting locally is against purely caucasian folks who are here legally. Since we're in the country, we have no city water or city sewage system--or trash pickup in many areas. We must rely on well systems, septic systems, and pay someone for trash removal.

The problem is that people are buying an acre or two of land, and hauling in trailers, just about wall to wall. Too many people for the septic systems to work, the danger of this waste water seeping into the well-water, trash burning even in dry seasons (wildfires are always a danger in windy Oklahoma) to get rid of the trash--all of these are glaring reasons for zoning laws and ordinances. To do otherwise would be almost criminally negligant. Our zoning laws say there must be a minimum of 2.5 acres per dwelling--not to keep the poor folks out, but for public health and safety. (If we had city water, sewer, and trash removal systems, it would be unnecesary.)

However, these people, like one_particular_harbour, think that since they own the land, they can do whatever they want. The town is actively gathering its legal resources to show them otherwise. Laws like these are simply common sense, not some kind of weapon to wield against immigrants.

Can you imagine this absurd behaviour after September 11?

It is often that these immigrations are fostered by upheaval. In my neighborhood, (across the street) the families are from El Salvador. (They came in after the trouble and received refugee status. They built a second house in the back and have 8 cars in the drive. They do all work (a plus) , and because the zoning laws in my city do not permit unrelated folk, they are all "cousins". They do keep the mess down and have the home painted because the city keeps after them for this too. But anyone can see this is too many people using too much of the infrastructure for what they are paying.

Note on taxes, the many, many kids get free lunches, free buses, medical, emergency service... and as it was pointed out, the IRS probably does not know about a lot of the "rent" since it is a room mate situation, not a true rental.

(1) So you only have community when you can tell other people what to do in their home.

(2) This bozo is going to be a teacher. Ugh.

Property values do not plummet! But the ordinary family will be priced completely out of the market. In Los Angeles, the low end market is driving the real estate market. Homes are selling for three times what they sold for just a few years ago. These are bona fide slum homes. As many families will pool as it takes to buy one of these homes and the prices keep going up and up. It's amusing to see a complaint about 14 people living in a small home when it is certainly not unusual here to have 50 or more. There will come a day when you look at only 14 as small. You however will not be able to buy a home. You will not be able to afford $300,000 for a two bedroom condo. Moreover, you probably won't want to live next door to what amounts to a petri dish. You'll want to get your kids out of that school, particularly when lice and disease starts to roll through. The reality and logistics of living in a neighborhood where 20 to 50 people live in each residence is truly disgusting. Consider 20 or more people living in a two bedroom one bath home. Consider the bathroom scheduling, and watch the streets as they fill with feces and urine. You think lack of parking is bad. These poor families and they are poor supplement their income with raising some of their own livestock. You'll have chickens and goats in what used to be flower gardens, with THEIR waste hosed into the gutters. Mexicans need to enjoy their sports too, no matter how illegal they might be. Cockfighting is wildly popular as well as dog-fights. You might enjoy it, at least until one of the dogs gets loose and eats a neighborhood child. You in the cities just now being invaded have NO IDEA what you are in for. You have no idea how bad it can get. I pity those who dismiss complaints as being racist and biased. I pity those who say "Well, this was the way it was 100 years ago". When fires would rage through overcrowded tenanments because there were no safety codes, or disease would ravage a neighborhood. The past should not be a goal of the future, we overcame hazards and instituted laws to protect us from those hazards. Out laws mean absolutely nothing to these immigrants. NOTHING. If you can possibly do so, save yourselves and your neighborhoods.

Fine, OPH. I can only hope a third world family buys a house next to yours and proceeds to move all thirty of their relatives--aunts, uncles, cousins, and shirt tail relatives, so you can experience first-hand the joys of watching your property values plummet.

Boy, you said it. The 6-bedroom house two doors over from me, which was overbuilt for this neighborhood, finally got sold to a Cambodian "family." Criminy, there must be 30 of them in there...aunts, uncles, kids, friends. They have so many cars they have to park them on the once-immaculate front lawn. Plus they can't seem to drive so they are always bashing into the front of their garage and there is now a big hole there where stucco used to be. (No thought given to repairing and repainting it, apparently.)

I just walk or drive past with my eyes shut now. The only upside is that, if you can believe this, they are much quieter than the loony widow and her slutty, big-mouthed brat who live right next door. Go figure.

Another thing to consider is public schools which are usually funded primarily by property taxes. People cramming 15 kids into a three bedroom house are paying the same property tax that a family with two or three kids pay. Some may consider this a minor point, but it's still another way your average citizen is getting ripped off.

And one person living alone can pay the same amount in property taxes as a family with several kids, and the single homeowner is receiving no direct benefit from the schools. This issue is more a result of the tax system than of the overcrowding problem.

So then, do regulations concerning, say, "scenic corridors" meet your approval? Or perhaps any environenmantal regualtions, many of which, if enforced, would certainly, and do, bolster certain landowner's property values, though at the same time they restrict other landowners. For example, say I wish to log my property, but the other property owners in the area have passed environmental regulation forbidding it. I would assume you would be in favor? Technically, you still own the property, and can do many things on it, of course they must be reasonable, but hey, it's a fairly free country. But with regulations, zoning, etc, you are steadily limited and limited in what you can do with your own property, and I don't see it as a good thing.

Student ghetto may result from new zoning codes Just how important are zoning codes in Oxford¹s original square mile? I own a house on Woodruff Court, a small cul-de-sac off North Poplar Street. During the past couple of years, two of the five houses on my block have been sold to entrepreneurs who rented their property to Miami students. What was once a quiet residential neighborhood has become another noisy staging ground for all-night student beer blasts. Ear plugs and our capable police department notwithstanding, it¹s impossible to get a good night¹s sleep on my street, especially on weekends! The other day, the owner of the house next door stopped by to ask me to support his efforts to change our local zoning codes. As an out-of-town landlord, he has recently purchased my neighbor¹s large house, and was determined to fill it with more than the four students currently permitted under our local ordinances. Whether I supported him or not, he pointed out that several of my other neighbors are planning to move and sell their houses to realtors, who will rent to students. Eventually, my neck of the woods will be exclusively an enclave of student rentals, and zoning restrictions will be relaxed to allow more students to fill every house in the vicinity. Nobody wants to see Oxford turn into a student ghetto. Yet apparently nobody will want to stand in the way of landlords greedy for more tenants and heftier revenues. I call upon my fellow citizens, as well as the good people on our town council: we must resist pressure from realtors and wheeler-dealers to ease up on our zoning codes. If two¹s company and three¹s a crowd, any more than four students per house will spell the end of Oxford¹s original square mile as a viable residential neighborhood for all of us in years to come. James Reiss Professor of English and Editor, Miami University Press

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