Cobb County Hates Families

This is an irritating proposal I read about at one of my favorite local blogs, Blog for Democracy. Cobb County's overlords are always trying to doing stuff like this. They are the geniuses behind the "Evolution is just a Theory" stickers for biology textbooks.

Cobb officials want to ban home crowding

Under Cobb's proposal, a house must have at least 390 square feet of "total building square footage" for each adult resident and for each car parked overnight. It also would limit the people living in a home to one family or two or fewer unrelated adults and their children and/or grandchildren. Family is defined as parents, children, grandparents, grandchildren, brothers and sisters.

Officials say they could make exceptions. For example, if a family wanted to let its adult children live at home, it could apply for a land-use permit.

Arzate said she lives with her husband and two children, her father, her brother, and her other brother and his wife and two children. She said everyone living there is in the U.S. legally.

"I don't know what is the problem. I don't have too many people here," said Arzate, speaking in English. "It is only my family."

Arzate says she suspects she's being picked on because she's Hispanic, an accusation her neighbors deny. They have complained repeatedly to Cobb officials about Arzate's property.

The county has issued citations to Arzate for litter on her property and for cars parked in her yard. Cobb authorities issued a warrant for her arrest this month after she failed to appear in court on the charges.

"They are in the back playing volleyball on their days off," said Carolyn Warner, a retired Delta flight attendant who lives around the corner from Arzate. "They are probably illegal. ... They are all young men."

I actually believe that rules regarding outside appearances of houses and apartments are justified and important. I used to live in an apartment building with way too many junked cars used as secondary storage; the rules against them were not enforced well enough. That being said, it seems blindingly obvious that this woman is being targeted because of racism. The nasty remark by her neighbor... oh my god, they're playing volleyball on their days off! How dare they!

I have a strong feeling there is a Caucasian family several blocks over from Arzate, and they have a junked pickup truck and a mouldy sofa in their front yard, and no one has bothered to give them a citation so far.

Anti-Hispanic racism is very strong and very ugly in the suburbs around Atlanta.

I believe the proposed ordinance about living space is racist, promotes class warfare against the poor and is anti-family. You should have the right to let your uncle sleep on your couch, or put up your sick grandmother, or have your adult children live with you. Not everyone belongs to a neatly symmetrical nuclear family living in a damn McMansion. Why does that model have to be legally enforced as the most desirable one for American living? It's wasteful and often isolating.

If I lived in Cobb in the same size house as I have here in Dekalb, and the law went through, it would have been illegal to have my dad stay with us for two months while he recuperated from ankle surgery.

Also, Cobb families would not need so many cars if suburban lawmakers did not support racist, dumbass measures against public transportation while slurping up bribe money from road construction equipment lobbyists (read here for a high-level analysis if you are further interested).