Thread: Examiner Editorial - The hidden costs of cheap labor

http://www.dcexaminer.com/articles/2005 ... 1labor.txt

21Dec'05

Published: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 7:28 PM EST
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The ongoing political debate over whether it takes a village - or a family - to raise a child takes on new meaning when the whole village seems to be living in a house originally designed for one family.

Ordinances governing single-family neighborhoods in Fairfax County have been flagrantly violated for years. For example, a house located on a quiet residential street in Annandale was retrofitted with two additional front doors - for a total of three - in full public view. Despite numerous complaints from neighbors, nothing happened. It's not hard to spot expanded driveways built to accommodate up to 10 vehicles overnight or loads of debris left at the curb on trash day that even the most wasteful nuclear family would have a hard time generating in one week.

County residents have complained for years that absentee landlords were turning residential properties into illegal boarding houses, but local supervisors either ignored them or made feeble, ineffectual attempts at enforcement.


Not surprisingly, the overcrowding problem has only gotten worse since 2001, when then-state Sen. Leslie Byrne proposed a legislative "solution" that would have prohibited county residents from sleeping anywhere in their own homes besides the bedrooms. Passed by the state Senate on a 20-19 vote, public ridicule soon forced Byrne to withdraw her bill after an angry constituent pointed out that he could be fined for taking naps in his rec room recliner.

County investigators have reportedly looked into 585 overcrowding complaints so far this year, but the county's deputy zoning administrator for enforcement couldn't say for sure how many violations were found. That's keeping on top of things, Fairfax-style. Now the Board of Supervisors is seeking state approval to impose criminal fines - up to $2,500 per day and a year in jail - on landlords caught deliberately violating overcrowding laws. Prince William supervisors are also seeking the same permission from the General Assembly.



Who's going to catch them? Both counties already have laws against overcrowding that they have proved spectacularly unable - or unwilling - to enforce in the past.

One of the high costs of cheap labor, overcrowding is an unacknowledged - but inevitable - result of looking the other way as illegal immigrants flood Northern Virginia to work at jobs that pay higher wages than where they come from, but still not enough to afford the overheated local housing market. In an area where even police officers and teachers have trouble finding affordable housing, where do public officials think these undocumented workers are going to live?

The problem is by no means limited to the Washington area. About 1 percent of the U.S. population is housed in severely overcrowded conditions, defined by the federal government as more than 1.5 people per room. Last week a New Jersey Superior Court judge sentenced a man accused of "stacking" as many as 16 boarders in a single-family house to 20 days in jail. Day laborers in Houston pay $50 a week to sleep on bare, soiled mattresses in dingy rooms with two or three other workers. These makeshift rooming houses frequently become havens for drinking, drugs, crime and prostitution.



The same thing is happening here. Last week, three Herndon landlords were found guilty in Fairfax District Court of violating occupancy laws. Herndon is the same place Fairfax County plans to build a tax-funded shelter for day laborers, which will attract even more workers to an area that clearly cannot house the ones who are already there.

The city of Fenton, Mich. has come up with a better idea. It restricts the number of people allowed to live in each rental unit, based on the number of bathrooms and bedrooms. But landlords there are also required to list each renter by name. The city then records each tenant's driver's license and place of employment - and holds tenants themselves responsible for any problems they cause.

It's already illegal in Fairfax County for more than four unrelated persons to live under one roof, punishable by a civil penalty of up to $100 per day. Since the county has failed to enforce its own residency laws or state laws forbidding the hiring of undocumented workers, is not clear how tougher penalties will make any difference. But after a day laborer was killed and two others injured in a fire in the two-story garage in Falls Church where they were living, local politicians had to do something.

And raising penalties for overcrowding is a lot easier than dealing with the root of the problem.

As someone who lived in Fairfax County, (Chantilly) for 20 years I can tell you first hand how bad the problem is. I lived between 2 flop houses, in our case townhouses. 15 lived one side and close to 20 on the other. Both were homeowners and after years of fighting LEGALLY to address the problem, I gave up and moved to the Pittsburgh area. Here in Pittsburgh, Americans are doing the jobs that Bush says Americans don't want