A few thoughts on occupancy limits in Provo

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The law needs to change. People are literally being driven from their homes—being threatened with lawsuits by the city of Provo, essentially evicted from homes with more than enough space for them. Were they a husband and wife and brother and sister-in-law, plus children, they would be permitted to remain and have as many cars as they wanted. But because these are four unrelated individuals living together, the city threatens a criminal lawsuit against their landlord and forces them to move, disrupting relationships, wasting time, and making them feel distinctly unwelcome.

This just happened to my friends, two doors down from me. It fits better in a dystopian novel for young adults than in a free society like Provo.

Many reasons have been given for the occupancy limit in Provo. People say they need to preserve single-family homes for nuclear families with children. People say parking is out of control. People complain there won’t be children for their children to play with or to attract funding to their schools. I literally heard a man complain on Sunday that Polynesians and Latinos would immigrate here in greater numbers without such an occupancy limit.

Some of these reasons are noble, some of them are despicable. The noble ones can all be addressed more directly and justly than by kicking single people out of their homes. School boundaries and ward boundaries can be redrawn. Parking can be regulated directly on a per-neighborhood basis. But government should not be enlisted to make sure all your neighbors look and act and live like you. Government should not be asked to socially engineer society in one group’s favor, to the exclusion and expulsion of other groups.

Regarding parking, Provo City already has a parking permit program that could be used to address that problem directly: https://www.provo.org/about-us/current-issues/parking-permit-programs

If there are specific neighborhoods where parking is a problem (and we all know there are) then parking in that neighborhood should be regulated. Kicking single people out of their houses may indirectly help with parking, but so would kicking out teenagers or married people or black people or gay people.

If parking is the issue, then let’s fix parking. If school boundaries are the issue, then let’s fix school boundaries. But let’s stop using Provo city government as a weapon against its own citizens. This injustice is happening now, and it needs to stop.

Provo: Welcome Home (Unless Single)

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The city of Provo, Utah, has undertaken a campaign to reduce the number of single people living in its boundaries, to limit the number of singles living in existing housing, and to prevent additional housing for singles from being built.

It’s not too far off from singles-cide.

Imagine if this were done to any other group—Catholics, Asians, lesbians, etc. How would it look for a city to have an explicit policy of limiting and reducing the numbers of Catholics, Asians, or lesbians in its borders? It would be an outrage.

But somehow when it comes to unmarried individuals, it’s accepted, enshrined in city ordinances and state and federal law. Somehow discrimination against single people is seen as okay.

Well, it isn’t okay. It’s wrong. We’re people, too. Adults. Productive employees. Contributing members of congregations and communities.

In fact, over half of American adults are single.

Most of us get that marriage has a stabilizing effect on society. In fact, most of us would love to be married. But the reality is that people are getting married later—staying single for longer. And yet we’re treated like our equal right to housing and employment isn’t valid, simply because we aren’t married.

This needs to change.

Provo, for example, defines zoning restrictions that limit households consisting of singles to no more than three adults. Married people face no such restrictions—as long as people are related by blood or marriage or adoption there can be as many adults as they can cram in the house—plus up to two completely unrelated individuals. But when the household consists only of single adults (plus dependent children if any) the limit is a firm three individuals. The justifications given for this difference are thus:

Singles in the neighborhood make for fewer friends for the married folks’ kids.
Singles in the neighborhood all have cars and lead to an overflow of available on-street parking, potentially preventing emergency services and garbage services from doing their job.
The ability of landlords to charge rent to numerous singles drives up rents for married families.

Somehow parking and the desire for playmates for children and the hope for cheaper rent are used as a justification for discrimination. But 1) is using legal measures to drive single people out of the neighborhood really going to help your kids? It’s unlikely to lead to more households with kids—just fewer singles living in the households that they already live in. 2) Couldn’t parking be addressed directly such as granting limited on-street parking permits to homeowners? And 3) rents are so high because the city isn’t approving new housing for the people demanding it—singles! Were the housing market allowed to operate without these marital status considerations, that problem would have already solved itself by now.

I spent a while looking into whether Provo City is violating the Utah Fair Housing Act by defining zoning restrictions in terms of marital status. It turns out that the Utah Fair Housing Act never mentions marital status, but prohibits discrimination on the basis of whether one is caring for children. Provo’s code is careful not to discriminate on the basis of whether children are present, but willfully discriminates on the basis of marital status.

And so it would be unlikely for a legal case to go anywhere, given the current law.

This is the real problem: that in an era when age at first marriage has increased substantially and there are more singles as a proportion of the population than ever, it’s completely legal in Utah and in most states for individuals and governments to discriminate on the basis of marital status.

It’s wrong.

It needs to change.

Let’s change it. Now.

#SinglesAreHumanToo

Links:

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/0614/Singles-nation-Why-so-many-Americans-are-unmarried
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_person

Chapter 34: A Time To Mourn

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The last year has been a hard one for me. I’ve come to the painful realization that my life in many ways is far from what I wanted. I always wanted to be faithful, but I’m a doubter. Always wanted to be connected, but in many ways I’m a loner.

The dream I sought for years was that I would get past my doubts and finally come to know the truth, come to know that God loves me and that he’s an active part of our lives. But instead of closer to that dream I’m farther away than ever.

My dream was to be firmly ensconced in a loving community, accepted for my contributions, loved in spite of my faults. But I no longer feel I belong where I’d built my life for so long.

My dream was to be married to a woman I loved with all my heart, to be surrounded by children in a home filled with love. But I’m a failure at relationships. I don’t know how to be close to people. Anyone who tries eventual gets pushed away or put at a distance.

My dream was to build a better relationship with my father. But he’s been dead almost three years, and my mom even longer.

A lot of the time I’m fine. I can make life work with its ambiguities and disappointments. But ultimately the pain of these broken dreams comes to the fore and I find myself casting about for an anchor to hold on to.

I’m in one of those times right now. I’ll pull through it. The crisis will recede sooner or later. But still these tensions will remain. I don’t know the long-term answer. I don’t know how to really make life work as a hypersensitive guy who’s struggled all his life, struggled to find a foundation, struggled to stay connected to the people that love him. I don’t know how to finally resolve all the memories, all of the past that I carry around inside of me, the tragedies that still ache for me years removed, for which there is no answer but mourning.

But I suppose that is the answer. Mourning.

How do you go about it? How can any mourning ever be sufficient? How can any tears ever make right entire lives of tragedy?

I don’t know.

But maybe that’s not what tears are for. They don’t make anything right. But they help us to accept that there is injustice in the world. And they help us to let go of the wrong.

Anyway, this is the latest chapter in my life story. It’s not the story I set out to tell. But I guess that’s because I’m not the omniscient narrator: I’m really just a character. And I guess it’s taken 34 chapters for the character development to really come to a head. What will the next chapter bring? I guess we’ll all just have to keep reading.