Chesterfield County is a step closer to limiting the number of family members who can live under one roof.
The county's Planning Commission voted 3-2 yesterday to recommend setting more rigid occupancy standards for single-family homes.
The measure, prompted by complaints of overcrowding in certain neighborhoods, has been sent to the county Board of Supervisors, which could vote on it as early as next month.
Mike Burnette of Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia blasted the ordinance, claiming it was "clearly designed to limit access to housing to Hispanics."
He warned that the measure, if adopted, could violate the state's fair-housing laws because its enforcement would be complaint-driven and likely target Hispanics.
Commission Chairman Russell J. Gulley took exception to Burnette's and others' comments.
"Always from the beginning, this was a safety issue, and it was always about protecting the integrity of what we define as a single-family residential neighborhood," he said. "It has nothing at all to do with immigration."
The limits would allow up to four adults under a single roof from 901 to 1,200 square feet and five related adults in a 1,201to 1,750-square-foot home; the limits would move upward in increments.
As many as 10 related adults (22 or older) could live in the same home, but it would have to be 4,501 to 5,000 square feet.
Though Richmond and the counties of Chesterfield, Hanover and Henrico do not limit occupancy based on square feet, Caroline County and the town of Herndon in Northern Virginia do.
One of the complaints that prompted the measure came from the 500-home Surreywood subdivision near Hull Street Road, where residents complained that a large group of Hispanic immigrants had purchased a home and moved in. The occupants later moved out, neighborhood residents said, but the neighbors wanted to keep the situation from occurring again.
"I want to go on public record here to say that our issue is not about the origin of the people who are renting houses out to different kinds of people," said Jo Trout, president of the Surreywood Civic Association.
She said the concern was for safety, the number of vehicles on the road, trash in the streets and a general lack of interest in the neighborhood from those rooming in a house. "They're not vested in our community. They're just renting a room. They don't really care," she said.
She called the occupancy limits a step in the right direction but suggested that the commission needed to go further and look at the definition of single-family homes and consider a special permit for renting rooms.
In the end, Commissioners Sam R. Hassen and William P. Brown dissented, both expressing concern that the ordinance could not be enforced by the county's limited staff.
"I also am concerned about unintended consequences," Brown said.
In other matters, the commission unanimously voted to send on to the supervisors an ordinance to allow residential wind-energy systems -- windmills -- to provide electricity to homes.
The measure would allow free-standing wind turbines as tall as 50 feet on lots of 5 acres or more in residential districts and as tall as 150 feet in agricultural districts.
Contact Wesley P. Hester at (804) 649-6976 or whester@timesdispatch.com.
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