Lety Castellanos was perturbed.
With the closing on the sale of her Waukegan house fast approaching, a city inspection was just another hurdle before the deal could get done. So she hovered as an inspector measured each room to determine the maximum number of people who could live there.
City officials began the inspections this month in a fresh attempt at controlling residential overcrowding, a problem vexing some suburbs in the Chicago area, particularly those with large immigrant populations. West Chicago, Cicero, Waukegan and Addison are among those that have wound up in court over their occupancy enforcement in recent years, accused of discriminating against Latinos.
Waukegan believes its new approach will pass legal muster because it’s based on measurements that will be applied to everyone.
But Castellanos, 42, found it an unnecessary hassle.
“You’ve got to pay $100, and it’s just another cost … at closing.”
The city already had occupancy limits and enforced them when necessary, often after neighbors complained about traffic, noise or unsafe conditions from houses where too many people crowded together. Now it will attempt to make sure everyone buying a house knows those limits by mandating an inspection for every single-family and two-flat home listed for sale and requiring the seller to post a city-issued placard that lists the results.
“The placard explains everything,” said Building Commissioner John Jurkovac. Sellers and buyers “know up front the number of people that can live there … it’ll prevent problems down the line.”
The city’s past efforts to tamp down on overcrowding ran afoul of fair-housing advocates. But when asked, one such activist said the new approach seemed fair.
“I have no problem with it if they’re going to utilize the [zoning] code,” said Margaret Carrasco, who was among those 13 years ago who rallied Latinos against a Waukegan ordinance that limited home occupancy to members of the same family. Those efforts led to a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against the city in 1996.
“I think [the occupancy limit] should be posted,” she added. “Why keep it a secret? More communication is always a good thing.”
The new ordinance, which was unanimously passed May 7 by the City Council, requires sellers to pay $100 and submit to an inspection, which also includes a check for safety equipment such as smoke and carbon monoxide detectors and sprinklers over gas-burning equipment such as furnaces and water heaters, Jurkovac said.
Inspectors calculate the occupancy by figuring how many people legally can sleep in each bedroom.
City code requires bedrooms to be at least 70 square feet, said Hank Landrau, Waukegan’s senior zoning inspector. If a bedroom is between 70 and 100 square feet, one person can sleep there; if it is 100 square feet or greater, the rule is 50 square feet per occupant.
Castellanos’ three-bedroom house could sleep six people, said Landrau, who inspected the home.
Jurkovac said the new approach was needed because his department had issued citations for building code violations — such as basements without proper exits used as bedrooms or a home with too many occupants — only to have homeowners say that real estate agents or previous owners had assured them that the illegal uses were acceptable.
The new approach has its roots in the court settlement of the 1996 lawsuit.
In that case, the Justice Department sued the city on the basis that it was unconstitutional to limit occupancy to members of a single family, which it defined as wife, husband and all children from that union, plus two extended relatives. The department also charged that enforcement unfairly focused on Latinos.
The sides reached a settlement a year later that required the city to base its occupancy limits on square footage. In what then-Mayor Bill Durkin called a “100-percent business deal,” Waukegan admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to set aside $175,000 to be divided among Latino residents singled out by the ordinance. The city also paid $25,000 to the Justice Department in civil penalties.
Newton Finn, founder of Taskforce on Waukegan Neighborhoods, said the new approach is a step in the right direction.
“It certainly lets people know before they buy the house what the issues are,” Finn said.
He said many large homes in older parts of the city have been purchased by landlords who have “proceeded to carve them up into four, five, six units.”
“There’s neighborhood issues, parking in the back yard, people milling about, the ‘Waukegan alarm clock,’ when the horns are beeping at 5 in the morning,” Finn said.
But local real estate agent Porfirio Garcia, owner of Re/Gar Realty in Gurnee, said Waukegan’s amended rules raise concerns.
The timing of the inspections, before a home is under contract, could be problematic, he said. If sellers are violating code — by using an ineligible space for a bedroom, for example — they could be required to make difficult and expensive changes to their home, potentially months before finding a buyer.
“There’s a gray area there,” Garcia said. “It really puts the owner on the spot.”
One fair-housing advocate said the city’s approach doesn’t address the main reason some have to live in overcrowded conditions: low wages and lack of employment opportunity.
“We can all do the math — if someone makes minimum wage they’re not going to be able to afford an apartment on their own,” said Bernard Kleina, executive director of the HOPE Fair Housing Center in Wheaton. “They’re forced to move in with another family.”
He also noted that cities seem to start enforcing occupancy limits only when their neighborhoods see an influx of Latino immigrants.
“If a community is 100 percent white, they’re not going to care about occupancy standards,” he said.
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alwang@tribune.com
