FYI - Unity in the Community in conjunction with the
GMU Institute For Conflict Resolution will sponsor
a seminar on “Immigration: Building Community
through Dialogue” on April 21st 9AM-2PM at
the GMU Manassas Campus (Bull Run Hall, Room 131).
If attending, you are requested to register with
lshaw2@gmu.edu by April 16th.

Perhaps a joint meeting with HSM in the future?
That would be interesting.

I wonder how this sits with the liberal kooks at the BRUU. Our Mother Gia, Earth, the Big Blue Marble, is sweltering under the .5 degree rise in temps. Polarbears are drowning, lesbian Penguins seperating, and we have illegal aliens…ooops…I mean undocumented oppressed immigrants are driving big SUV’s which are generating greenhouse gases.

I am sure that Jeanette Rishell will also express the plight of the undocumented opressed immigrants who are losing their homes, due to the rising interest rates on the sub-prime ARM’s that these people used to buy their homes. Of course they need to overcrowd them. It is caused by the systematic exploitation of these uneducated unskilled immigrants, by predatory lendors.

Never mind that they should be here to begin with. That is something that she will never admit.

the back and forth between Greg and citizen sam was interesting.

This is what has citizens in a uproar in the Greater Manassas area. A lot of the overcrowding that is occurring here, isn’t by single families. Most of us do not define large groups of men as family. Nor do we define three different “family units”, mother, father and children, living in the same house as a single family. Three units would be three families not a single family.

On top of all of that, why then do a large portion of these overcrowded houses have 4 or 5 $30,000- $40,000 SUV’s parked in front of them. Most Americans don’t live above their means. They rent, scrape and save for years to buy a home.

I’m glad you clarified yourself and want to help in the effort of illegal aliens and overcrowding in the area.

HSM can accomplish great things and we need good people to help in the effort.

The Moore decision goes on at length to argue that in East Cleveland the ordinance was a heavy-handed attempt to control generic overcrowding which could have been effectively dealt with in other ways. The supreme court didn’t say that the city couldn’t do something like this, it said that there was no compelling interest to do it in this manner. Because there were other available approaches to mitigating potential problems — such as controlling on-street parking — that the city never pursued, the city failed to demonstrate that this was the least intrusive means of controlling overcrowding.

East Cleveland wasn’t subjected to large numbers of illegal aliens who were stuffing multiple families, or large groups of unrelated persons into single family residences on a constant basis. Manassas has over time enacted various methods of controlling overcrowding, including residential parking restrictions, and reasonably had exhausted every alternative zoning ordinance opportunity. That considerably changes the equation, and makes the Moore decision as it was decided inapplicable to Manassas from my perspective.

I’m not a lawyer either, but this is my read of the legal landscape.

When HSM starts wading into the city ordinance discussions, I think we’ll have support from the Immigration Reform Law Institute to help wade through all these decisions and help us steer clear of getting sidetracked by arguments such as this one. While I believe that what Manassas did was in compliance with the law, there are probably other areas where progress could be made more rapidly. At some point we will inevitably revisit this specific means of controlling overcrowding, and hopefully by then there will be some more specific and applicable guidance from the courts.

1. E. Cleveland did not demonstrate that their restrictions were the least intrusive solution available. Manassas can.

2. E. Cleveland’s efforts were not aimed at combating the presence of illegal aliens, which is a more compelling interest than generic overcrowding.

3. There was no serious overcrowding problem in E. Cleveland at the time of the Moore case, so the approach they took couldn’t be strongly linked to an actual problem. Manassas would have no problem demonstrating an actual and serious problem.

The Moore case is not a good precedent for Manassas, because the circumstances are not consistent between East Cleveland and Manassas. Although they both deal with overcrowding ordinances, there is little else that seems to make the situation addressed in that case analagous to this one.

However I would have loved it if Manassas had decided to challenge the law suits rather than cave in. Some of my reasoning on why Manassas (possibly) could have won.

1. East Cleveland’s ordinance was even more restrictive than Manassas’s.

2. That decision was made in the early 1970’s - an almost 100% change of justices from our current Supreme Court. This simply means we have a different set of minds on the court.

3. Since the 1970’s it is very arguable that the Court’s of our lands have become more and more flexible with allowing local and state governments more latitude in zoning and land use decisions. Look at Kelo for goodness sake.

Im not disagreeing with you based of what the legal scholars are saying about the existing precident. Im just making the case that a new decision could have been reached based off entirely new circumstances.

However, if your mother or father lived in the house you could declare one of them as “head of the household” and you could have as many of your kids, siblings, siblings spouses, nieces, and nephews as the fire code will allow.

I know Im splitting hairs, as your situation may not have your parents involved but Im just giving you an example where your sister and her kids (and her husband for that matter) could live with you under the Manassas ordinance.

The thirty year old Moore decision was predicated on the idea that the ordinance did not narrowly combat the problems the city was trying to solve. In the intervening time, and given how different the circumstances are, I believe that the Manassas ordinance did narrowly deal with overcrowding and illegal immigration in the most effective way possible, and supported a public interest that cannot be denied. The circumstances and intent of the Moore decision vary enormously from the circumstances in Manassas, and the intent of the ordinance is much more clear than that was evident in East Cleveland back then.

Therefore it is unenforceable.