QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Society

(Each "Question of the Week," an idea which I gleaned from A Republic If You Can Keep It, will remain toward the top of the blog until the next question appears. The previous Questions of the Week are HERE. Please scroll down for recent postings)

Not long ago, Farmers Branch, Texas, conducted a referendum in which the voters there indicated overwhelming support for the local ordinance forbidding the renting of residences to illegal immigrants:

"The thing that strikes me most about it, is just the level of emotion, the level of frustration regarding the whole immigration issue," said Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University.

It's no wonder that emotions are running high. Consider this May 13, 2007 article in the Washington Post. The article discusses the issue of overcrowding in residences occupied by larger numbers than some established neighborhoods are used to and whether or not zoning regulations permit large numbers of occupants to dwell in single-family homes.
---------------------------------------
Excerpt from the article in the Washington Post:

Harry Gault doesn't think of the small ranch home next door as a hot-button political issue in this year's Fairfax County election or realize how frequently his complaint is heard throughout the region.

"I don't mind an Hispanic neighborhood," said Gault, 73. "But they've turned a three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath home into a nine-room boarding house."

Long a source of tension in the suburbs, where high prices force many immigrants to pool financial resources and share housing, residential crowding has generated a surge of complaints in Fairfax, a county where one in four residents is foreign-born.

With the entire Fairfax Board of Supervisors up for reelection this year, this issue, which has raised ire in communities across the Washington area, has taken on a hard edge among voters riled by single homes that have been converted to house eight or 10 adults. Suddenly, multiple cars clog driveways designed in the 1950s for one or two vehicles. Trucks park on narrow streets, making them difficult to navigate in the morning and evening. And in the 24-7 service economy -- where nine-to-five is only one of several shifts and workdays begin and end at all hours -- workers and their vehicles are in the streets day and night.

Read the entire article here.



QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Have you observed or been impacted by similar overcrowding of residences in your neighborhood or in a neighborhood with which you are personally familiar?