Julia Rosenblatt comes from a family that embraces communal living. Her parents, college students and anti-war activists, met and lived together in a shared house in Portsmouth, New Hampshire during the 1970s. This upbringing led Rosenblatt to develop a fascination with communal living, and when she became an adult, she decided to continue the tradition. Alongside her husband, two kids, and six friends (including one of their children), Rosenblatt moved into a nine-bedroom mansion in Hartford, Connecticut in 2014. The house, intended for a single family, didn’t deter Rosenblatt and her group from cohabitating like a typical family, sharing living spaces and responsibilities.
Shortly after settling in, Rosenblatt received a cease-and-desist letter from the city, stating that her group of 11 people had violated zoning laws by breaking the definition of family in Hartford. The issue arose when neighbors complained about the number of cars parked outside the house. Rosenblatt took the matter to court, and in 2016, the city dropped its case against her. However, similar laws and restrictions exist throughout the United States, albeit with varying levels of enforcement. A study conducted last year revealed that 23 out of the 30 largest metropolitan areas in the country imposed limits on the types of groups allowed to occupy or rent a single-family home. Most of these regulations define family strictly as individuals related by “blood, marriage, or adoption.” While some areas permit a limited number of “unrelated persons” to share a residence, others prohibit it entirely. These definitions fail to align with the way many Americans live today. In 1965, 44 percent of households consisted of married parents and their children, while, in 2020, that number dropped to just 19 percent, according to the Population Reference Bureau. The majority of people now live with roommates, in multigenerational households, or in long-term partnerships outside of marriage.
For years, laws governing family definitions have shaped cohabitation dynamics in America and entrenched the rigid nuclear family structure in housing regulations. In some cases, these laws have also enabled NIMBYism, a term referring to a “not in my backyard” mentality that neighborhood groups adopt to oppose non-traditional and extended families from forming. The narrow understanding of family infiltrates various other legal domains, such as laws pertaining to domestic violence, rent control, insurance, and inheritance. Efforts to reform zoning laws, however, have introduced a more inclusive approach to defining kinship in modern America, based on the ways people come together and care for one another.
Unfortunately, there are limited statistics on how frequently individuals are barred from living together due to non-familial relationships. Some cases arise from neighbor complaints, which then escalate into more serious consequences through zoning enforcement. Lincoln, Nebraska, for example, allows only blood-related, married, or adopted family members, as well as two unrelated individuals, to reside together. The city receives approximately 20 to 30 complaints on this matter annually, according to the Lincoln Journal Star. Bryan Wagner, the president of the American Association of Code Enforcement, notes that enforcement of these rules varies across the country. However, he believes that college areas may receive more complaints compared to quieter residential communities. In his experience working in Westerville, Ohio, as a code-enforcement official for ten years, Wagner encountered very few complaints related to over-occupancy violations.
Although complaints from neighbors do occur, the outcomes can be harsh. In 2016, the town of Wolcott, Connecticut, rejected a group home for individuals with disabilities. In Bar Harbor, Maine, a resident fought against the development of a home for seasonal workers, but eventually lost the case. In a particularly egregious incident in 2006, an unmarried couple with three children, including one from a previous relationship, in Black Jack, Missouri, were denied an occupancy permit due to the town’s zoning ordinance that effectively prohibited unmarried couples from cohabitating with more than one child. (The couple sued, and the city eventually settled the case.)
Unfortunately, these laws disproportionately impact immigrant families living in multigenerational households. Manassas, Virginia, for example, passed a law in 2005 restricting single-family households to only include “immediate relatives,” resulting in zoning-enforcement officers disproportionately targeting Latino households. Cobb County, Georgia, investigated 95 percent of family-based zoning violations involving Latino residents. Similar patterns have emerged in Waukegan and Cicero, Illinois.
The intertwining of zoning legislation and the definition of family can be traced back to Duncan McDuffie, a Berkeley, California real-estate developer. In 1916, McDuffie successfully lobbied for the implementation of single-family zoning laws, which restricted developments to standalone homes rather than duplexes or apartments. McDuffie’s primary motivation was to “prevent deterioration and assist in stabilizing values” in the city, but his actions were also motivated by a desire to prevent Black residents from moving into neighborhoods adjacent to his properties. Exclusionary practices have always been present in single-family zoning, while the interpretation of the term “family” by courts has been quite flexible, allowing for sorority sisters and temporary roommates to cohabitate in single-family homes. However, the political power of homeowners and a fear of communal living in the 1960s led to tighter definitions of family in local governments across the country. This shift aimed to legislate the nuclear family as the ideal social unit, often resulting in exclusionary practices and the denial of rights to non-traditional households. Even foster parents were affected, with Newark, New Jersey winning a case against them due to having too many “unrelated persons” (referring to their foster children) in their home.
In addition to housing regulations, restrictive definitions of family have influenced other areas of the law. When states began implementing domestic violence statutes, same-sex couples and unmarried partners were largely excluded from protection. Similar limitations have been observed in rent-control and accident-insurance cases, where individuals who consider themselves family are surprised to discover that they don’t meet the legal definition, consequently being denied insurance coverage or the ability to inherit a rent-controlled apartment.
Thankfully, definitions of family are slowly expanding once again and becoming more inclusive than those from the early 20th century. A recent court ruling in New Jersey recognized half-siblings who frequently spent time together at family functions as “household members” in the context of domestic violence. Some cities, like Iowa and Oregon, have eliminated family-based occupancy limits altogether, while others have chosen to revise and modernize their laws, assessing family based on how individuals act and care for each other. These changes mark a promising shift toward acknowledging and supporting diverse forms of kinship in today’s society.
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