Read the Ordinance (PDF, 604 KB)
The city of Pearl is drawing scrutiny over an ordinance limiting bedroom occupancy passed with a unanimous vote in February. It applies to residential premises, including houses, apartments and manufactured homes, among others. If the renter, holder or lessee wants to add an extra person to the limited arrangement--for example, a man and wife in a one-bedroom apartment who are expecting a child--he or she must request a residential occupancy permit from the director of community development in Pearl's Department of Code Enforcement.
The director is to base his decision on "zoning of the property, the health and safety of the proposed occupants, the impact on the neighboring interested parties, the number and size of the sleeping areas, the number, facilities and size of all bathrooms, the overall size of the dwelling unit, and the age and relationships of the proposed occupants."
The director can refuse to grant the permit if other property with more sufficient bedroom capacity is available within city limits, without regard to the potential price increase for multiple-bedroom apartments.
Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance Executive Director Bill Chandler said the ordinance clearly targets low-income Latinos.
"This ordinance is what we call the bedroom-police ordinance. ... f your two-bedroom family consists of two parents with two kids and you then have a third kid, you're in violation of the law and subject to a fine and imprisonment," Chandler said. "The white families living in one-bedroom trailers were not an issue in Pearl until the brown people moved in. Pearl's been a low-income, working class, white community for decades. Now brown folks move in, and we see this ordinance come around."
Pearl City Attorney Jim Bobo said the ordinance targets unscrupulous landlords who attempt to pile numerous beds into a single dwelling, creating an unsafe environment.
"(Law enforcement) has uncovered situations where they come into a place, and there are all these mattresses stacked together against the wall. These aren't families. These are crowds of people living under one roof," Bobo said, adding that Community Development Director Johnnie Stevens would likely be sympathetic if a man and wife with a one-bedroom place were expecting a child.
"... somebody comes in and wants a permit and says, 'I got a 10 by 10 (foot) bedroom, and I want to put five adult males--none of whom are related to each other--in there, I imagine it would be a problem," Bobo said.
Bear Atwood, interim legal director for the ACLU of Mississippi, said the ordinance is flawed and would not survive court scrutiny. "It may not, on its face, discriminate against immigrants, but it does discriminate against large families, and there's a clear constitutional right of privacy for families to decide how many children they want to have," she said. "Also, it doesn't set clear guidelines. ... I think it just leaves way too much to discretion."
Atwood said the ordinance leaves too much up to one person's opinion:
"Any kind of ordinance that has a constitutional restriction has to be narrowly tailored, but the community development director clearly has unfettered discretion to decide what he thinks and, by including things like the relationship of the people involved, is he going to value families over people not related by blood or marriage? Obviously, that's a place where immigrants may see serious issues. It's also a serious issue with unmarried couples, gay and lesbian couples, and large extended families that may well be excluded because the city does not approve of their relationship."
She also slammed the ordinance for relying on the peeping eyes and wagging tongues of neighbors. "You have to get your neighbor's permission, or at least your neighbor's non-objection, for how many children you'll have in your family or whether or not your mother-in-law comes to live with you. That's ridiculous," she said, adding that an applicant would have to send a $2 certified mailing to every neighbor--a potentially costly expenditure if the applicant must mail a certified letter to everyone in their apartment complex.
That, coupled with the $50 application fee, will make the process onerous to the type of low-income family that would normally request one-bedroom accommodations.
Chandler complained about the fine for violation--up to $1,000 or 90 days in jail--and asked whether the city would send police "to peek into bedrooms" while looking for violators. Bobo said the city would leave that up to neighbors, and said as of last week that no one, so far, has applied for a permit.
"It really is one of those things that would have to be brought to (the city's) attention. Code enforcement is not going to go out looking," Bobo said. "... [T]ypically these types of situations would be brought to the attention of the city through a citizen complaint, or some other interaction--domestic-violence call, some kind of thing like that."
Atwood said the ordinance's reliance upon neighbors does not help. "What that tells me is that they're intending to use selective enforcement, knowing that neighbors only complain about people they don't want there, which are often immigrants, or people they don't like," she said. "It shows you how subject it is to selective enforcement."
Pearl Alderman Todd Jenkins said he heard any fall-out from the ordinance. "I'm sure a lot of people may not like it, ... but it was something that we felt needed to be done," Jenkins said.
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