Fair Housing: Occupancy By Who's Standard (Part 2 of 2)

By Jo Becker, Education/Outreach Specialist, Fair Housing Council Serving Oregon and SW WashingtonIn our last article, we looked at the work of Tim Iglesias and the legal implications of, as well as the disparate impact of overly restrictive occupancy standards, including two-people-per-bedroom policies. In this article, the last in the two-part series, the work of Ellen Pader, an anthropologist and Associate Director of the Housing Research Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst we look at the historical and cultural perspectives behind our country's occupancy policies. I recently read Ms. Pader's Housing Occupancy Standards: Inscribing Ethnicity and Family Relations on the Land, published in the Journal of Architectural and Planning Research in the winter of 2002. Despite being more than a few years old, it is packed with - what for me - was stunning revelations about the deep and particularly contrived history of occupancy standards in the US. As you read along with me, I ask that you do so with an open mind. Step outside the lens of your role as a housing provider to gain greater perspective. Warning: Ms. Pader's vocabulary is rich but dense; I hope the excerpts I have selected here are not too arduous. That said, I strongly suggest you download the entire document (available at www.FHCO.org/occupancy.htm) and read it over a cup of something yummy some long, rainy evening. I'll start you off with the verbose preface to Pader's paper:THE PREMISEAttempts to define family and the appropriate sociospatial arrangements for an idealized "normal" U.S. household formation have had profound influences on the design and size of houses