Town practices housing discrimination against unmarried people

This is the story of one municipal regime that didn't learn its lesson from past humiliation.

In 2006, the town of Black Jack, Missouri - a suburb of St. Louis - tried to remove an unmarried couple and their 3 children from their own home because the city did not consider them to be a family. The town defined a family as either:

• a person living alone
• at least 2 people who are all related by blood, marriage, or adoption
• a maximum of 3 people who are not related by blood, marriage, or adoption

Under these rules, an unmarried couple with one child would be allowed - but they would not be allowed if they had 2 or more kids. (Ooh, an Allowed Cloud!)

The policy was preposterous on several fronts. For one, it wrongly defined children and their parents as not being family (solely because the parents weren't married). For another, it's none of the city's fucking business if unrelated people live together. The town enforced this policy by forcing residents to obtain an occupancy permit - which is an internal passport.

The town of Black Jack is clearly run by dominionist whack-a-doos who couldn't help sticking their noses where they didn't belong.

If I was the family who was barred from living in that city, I would have just ignored the order to leave town. Especially if I owned the house (in which case I couldn't be evicted by a landlord).

It turned out this discrimination had been going on for years in that suburb. Back in 1999, parents of triplets were barred from living in the city because they were unmarried. And way back in 1985, the city of Ladue, Missouri - a notoriously right-wing St. Louis suburb - did the same to a couple, citing an outdated ordinance prohibiting an unmarried couple from living together. The pair had lived in Ladue for 4 years. Joan Kelly Horn, the woman who was victimized by this law, said of her plight, "It was, 'Get married or move out.'" Believe it or not, the right-wing Missouri Court of Appeals actually upheld the ordinance against the couple.

(Incidentally, Horn was later elected to Congress. But she was later defeated by none other than right-wing extremist Jim Talent.)

The ordinances found in Black Jack and Ladue were clearly cases of housing discrimination by the town government. These laws may be discriminatory, but are these laws illegal? I would say that they are. If nothing else, it's a situation where common law must prevail. (The notion of common law in this case has nothing to do with whether a state recognizes common law marriages, which is a completely different matter.)

Following the 2006 controversy, Black Jack reportedly changed its ordinance to allow unmarried couples with any number of children to be defined as a family. But now the same thing is happening all over again!

Recently, an unmarried couple along with the woman's 3 children buyed a house in Black Jack. But now the city is forcing them to leave, citing the ordinance that has already generated so much ridicule and legal worry.

Didn't city officials learn from 2 negative stories over the exact same thing just in the past 9 years?

The city vows to go to court to defend its ordinance, but it has no case. Nonetheless, I do think it's time for federal housing laws to be strengthened so there's less ambiguity about protecting the public from this type of discrimination.

(Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch 2/21/06;
USA Today 5/16/06;
http://www.kansascity.com/news/breaking_news/story/639188.html)