Zoning Laws Hit Latinos in Suburbs

By: Paul F. CuadrosAll Sonia Paz wanted to do was rent out an apartment in her Northlake house just as the previous owners had done. But Paz, whose name means "peace" in Spanish, got very little peace once she found a tenant. What she did get were several visits by city inspectors, who questioned her neighbors, examined the names on her mailbox and took photographs.

The city of Northlake, a near west suburb, cited her for violating a zoning ordinance that forbids more than one family from living under the same roof. When she was told to evict her tenants, she refused. The previous owners, who were white, had rented the apartment for 10 years, Paz said.

"Why is it just us?" Paz said. "I spoke to several Hispanic families and the same thing happened to them."

Paz, who is Mexican American, lives with her husband, Luis, and their 4-month-old son. In January, she filed a housing discrimination complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD is investigating the complaint. Latinos now comprise 16.2 percent of Northlake's residents.

"When you walk around here and see that (whites) are not being bothered and we are, how would that make you feel? I was born and raised here and I don't see what the difference is," Paz said.

On Nov. 9, the city dismissed Paz's case but reserved the right to reinstate it after the HUD investigation, said Paz's attorney, Derrick M. Ford.

Northlake's new enforcement of longstanding zoning and occupancy laws is not an anomaly. Since 1992, four neighboring suburbs began stiffening enforcement of occupancy codes. All four also experienced big jumps in their Latino populations during the 1980s.

City officials say they're just cracking down on unscrupulous landlords with substandard properties.

In June 1992, several Franklin Park families living in a neighborhood called Villa Alegre were forced to move out when the town began enforcing overcrowding codes. The five-block area is predominantly Latino, said attorney Juan M. Soliz, a former Chicago alderman who filed a complaint with HUD on behalf of Villa Alegre residents in August 1992.

In Des Plaines, two cousins and their families were cited in July for violating a zoning ordinance regulating single family residence districts. The city dropped the matter once they learned that the two families were related by marriage. But one family moved out anyway because it feared more trouble.

Steve Trojan, who rents out a house in Bensenville in DuPage County, says he has been repeatedly charged by the city with violating occupancy laws. He had no previous problems with the city until "I started renting to Latinos" in 1989, Trojan said. "They're trying to pressure me to move those people out."

In Cicero, the West Towns Board of Realtors Inc. claims that a new ordinance restricting the size and location of for-sale signs discourages Latino home buyers.

"We're getting reports of selective enforcement," said Barbara Knox, who is deputy director of HUD's office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity in Chicago. "It's alleged that it's due to a change in demographics. The cities are concerned about overcrowding. They have changed the codes or are enforcing codes not previously enforced." The U.S. Department of Justice is considering legal action against the towns, she said.

While Latinos may have larger families, most do not live in overcrowded conditions. According to a widely accepted standard, a home is considered overcrowded when it has more than one person per room, according to the Latino Institute. Of the five suburbs, only Franklin Park has a significant overcrowding problem, where 53.2 percent of Latinos five in overcrowded conditions, according to 1990 statistics provided by the Latino Institute.

Cubic Air
The use of occupancy ordinances to keep out minorities is not new. More than a century ago, a San Francisco law was used to harass Chinese immigrants.

The so-called "cubic air" ordinance, passed in 1873, required that every house or apartment contain at least 500 cubic feet of air for each adult. According to the book, "Chinese Americans," by Stanford M. Lyman, hundreds of Chinese immigrants were arrested for violating the law. When they refused to post bail or pay fines, the city's jails swelled. Their protest embarrassed city officials and the law was soon repealed.

"It's ironic. The essence is the same. They try and institute something to get the people out," said Nancy Chen, executive assistant to U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, an Illinois Democrat. "Obviously, (Northlake) officials didn't study Chinese American history."

On March 25, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the town of Cicero, charging that a 1991 ordinance that limited the number of residents in a home discriminated against Latinos. It was the first time that the Justice Department has challenged an occupancy ordinance, said Isabelle M. Thabault, the agency's deputy chief of housing and civil enforcement. The suit is pending.

After Cicero passed the for-sale sign ordinance on Sept. 14, the West Towns Board challenged the law in Cook County Circuit Court, alleging that it discourages Latino home buyers.

"It's simply a pretext to cover the real motive," said Robert D. Butters, an attorney for the board. "If they can slow down homes for sale in Cicero, they can slow the number of Hispanics moving in."

"No matter what we do, people always accuse us of trying to keep Hispanics out," said town spokesman Raymond Hanania. "For-sale signs are often used by realtors to stir up real estate activity."

Hanania said Cicero is reaching out to Latinos. He noted that the Republican Party backed two Hispanic candidates in a recent nonpartisan school board election. Both lost.

Moving Out
Cicero is the first city sued by the federal government over its occupancy code, but it may not be the last.

In August 1992, Franklin Park building inspectors and police visited Villa Alegre. "The inspectors told everyone that we had to move," said resident Wanda Guerra. "They came and they didn't tell us why they were inspecting. Then they said, 'Oh, you have too many people.' They were just going into apartments without getting people's permission."

Ironically, the inspectors came to Villa Alegre after a local community organization requested their help.

In June 1992, the Committee for Villa Alegre asked village officials to help them force landlords to maintain their buildings.

"We were trying to get the village and the residents together," said Luis Albaracin, the group's president. 'The next thing we know, they started kicking people out of apartments," he added.

"The people took the inspectors as if they were immigration officers, so they moved," Guerra said.

Typically, police officers do not accompany building inspectors on their rounds, said Franklin Park Police Chief Ralph Iovinelli. The inspectors "may have called for an officer," he said.

The city then agreed to a petition to restrict its enforcement of the code. The restriction is set to expire in December. The complaint has been forwarded to the Justice Department.

Friendly People
Two years after buying a house in Northlake, Uvaldo Garcia is still frightened by the "City of Friendly People," Northlake's motto. After he spent two months renovating his home, someone tossed a pair of firecrackers at his front window, he said. The February 1992 explosions left shards of glass embedded in the walls of his living room and kitchen. The words "Get Out" were written on another window.

"No one lived here at the time, but if someone had, they would have been killed," Garcia said in Spanish. He reported it to the Northlake police, but did not receive a response.

"We have a suspect, but there has been no charge," said Police Chief Seymour Sapoznik. "We ain't got enough to really nail him," said Sapoznik, who does not believe the incident was racially motivated. "Not at all," he said. "The individual-he don't have the common sense for that."

Sapoznik said that police had contacted Garcia about the investigation, but could not say when.

A month after the incident, Garcia's mother-in-law, Maria Velasquez, opened the door to several Northlake police officers and Norman Nissen Sr., Northlake's director of health and inspectional services. Manuela Garcia, her daughter, was called home. The inspectors said they wanted to inspect the home for occupancy code violations, Manuela Garcia said. But she and her husband charge they did a lot more than that.

"They searched the drawers," Uvaldo Garcia said. "They were looking for things, like drugs or something. They went to the bathroom, the closets, the rooms." One of the police officers tried to kick down a locked door until his wife brought the keys, he added. Later, Garcia said that Nissen gave him 15 days to get his in-laws out. Nissen denied the charge. "I don't have the authority to tell someone to move out," he said.

And Sapoznik denied that officers ransacked the house. "They invited us in to sit down at the kitchen table and we had coffee," he said. "That's how polite they were and that's how polite we were. One of the officers even took his shoes off."

"No, that's a very great lie," said Manuela Garcia. "They entered. They checked even our clothes, they were moving things, they checked the beds, the closets." Velasquez agreed. "They knocked and then they kicked the door," she said.

On Jan. 21, HUD investigator Janet Fendrych was driving to Northlake in her government-issue car. She was on her way to meet with Northlake Mayor Reid Paxson to discuss charges of housing discrimination. When she crossed into Northlake, a police officer pulled her over. She pled no contest to speeding and paid a fine.

But Fendrych believes she was harassed because of her investigation. She has asked HUD to investigate the incident. Sapoznik declined to comment.

"When I found that out, I almost threw up," said Paz, the homeowner whose complaint to HUD brought Fendrych out to investigate. "I thought, 'My God, if they're putting this lady from HUD in jail, what are they going to do to us?"

"There has been a lot of injustice toward Mexicans here," Manuela Garcia said. "They told us we had too many people. You can't tell me how many family members I can have. We are one family."