What is a family?
This philosophical and politically charged question was before the Oneonta Common Council last week as a housing ordinance was being considered.
The city's previous definition of "family" put Oneonta on the losing end of a lawsuit, forcing the council to reconsider what exactly the word means when it comes to housing.
The city has had many challenges regulating rental properties over the past several years.
Efforts to rein in the growth of summer rentals have been met with confusion and anger.
The code enforcement office has struggled to ensure that rental properties are operating with valid certificates of compliance.
Now a lawsuit filed by a landlord and tenant has sent the city back to the drawing board to rework its long-standing occupancy rules.
For more than 30 years, the city has regulated the number of unrelated individuals living in a home. Officials have argued that this has helped preserve the quality of the city's neighborhoods.
College students and their landlords have good reason to feel they are being singled out by the new ordinance, which says tenants whose parents pay their rent, or whose rent is payable by the academic year, may be found not to be a family. That surely refers to no one but students, yet it is not an unreasonable statement.
By most people's definition, a group of college students, unrelated by blood, marriage or other kinship, are not a family in even the loosest sense.
Yet the same ordinance suggests that, if these same tenants share common property and expenses, they may in fact constitute a "functional family unit" and be permitted to share a home without obtaining a variance.
While some, such as mayoral candidate Jason Corrigan, have argued that the ordinance is discriminatory, we disagree.
The city has not defined "family" only as a man, wife and child; nor has it suggested that there are no occasions in which more than a few unrelated individuals may live together.
The city's new ordinance is not only reasonable, but also flexible, allowing that there may be situations or circumstances that its authors have not foreseen.
We know Oneonta will continue to face challenges as its population grows and changes.
As it does, we hope our leaders will continue to re-examine the needs of all its citizens: students, families, renters and landlords alike.
