Today’s New York Times carries an article about DBDs who live in Iselin, NJ (which is near Edison), who are being affected by the same anti-boarding house ordinances which Virginia is using against Hispanic day-laborers. Complaints from neighbors, usually about things like litter, imperfect lawns and the like are being investigated vigorously— but are they being pursued a little too vigorously? How much of this is icky bias and how much is ignorance regarding brown proclivities to live in extended family arrangements? And really, what is it that four DBDs living in a four-bedroom home could be doing, which is so suspect?
With the workweek behind him, Deepu Dass focused on a pesky bald spot in his front lawn here. As he sprayed the patch with water, urging the grass toward the perfection achieved by several neighbors, he said confidently: “I planted seeds.”
Two of his three roommates chatted behind Mr. Dass on the porch…The men — all Indian immigrants here on worker visas without their families — rent rooms month to month in this white, four-bedroom Cape Cod, where the kitchen shelves are stocked with food in bulk and the walls are decorated with reminders of home. “That’s Kerala,” said Mr. Dass, pointing to a silkscreen of a village fishing scene from his home state. “They call it God’s own country because it’s so beautiful.”
Absolutely. But that snide pride in the state from whence my parents came is for another post. Or five.
There have been up to six men sharing the house, whose owners include Suresh Kumar, president of NexAge Technologies USA, a nearby software company where the tenants work. But the unusual arrangement — and the unsightly lawn — caught the attention of local housing inspectors, and in May Woodbridge Township cited Mr. Kumar for several violations, including an unauthorized boarding house and an illegal multifamily dwelling. He has until Aug. 16 to resolve the situation, which may mean kicking his workers out.
I don’t get it. Everyone I know owns a rental property. Many of us rent such properties. A good number of us do so with roommates…where is this arbitrary line which divides the bad from the good? On the flawed lawn, which is apparently what got poor Deepu et al in trouble?
Mr. Kumar’s were among more than 300 notices of violation that the authorities handed out from January through May to homeowners in the 10 communities that make up Woodbridge Township, part of a stepped-up inspection effort the mayor announced last year…But in a twist to the familiar tales of suburban authorities breaking up illegally subdivided homes crowded with Hispanic day laborers, the mayor’s crackdown here has hit another group of immigrants: middle-class Indians who rent rooms or parts of rooms to Indian students, technology workers and others seeking a first foothold in this country.
Desi homeowners have been gifted with almost a quarter of the notices.
(The mayor) said that housing inspectors were not singling out any ethnic group and that none of the inspections had prompted arrests by federal immigration authorities or the police, as they have in places with many day laborers. Indian-American community leaders said they had good relations with the mayor, and there has been no suggestion that the residents of these houses are here illegally.
But the mayor’s rationale for the crackdown — to clean up potentially dangerous living situations, like a house in Iselin found to have as many as 10 people living in a basement, and another house that was used as an unlicensed day care center — is similar to those cited by leaders in heavily Hispanic areas.
Like Northern Virginia!
Sharmila Rudrappa, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of “Ethnic Routes to Becoming American: Indian Immigrants and the Cultures of Citizenship,” said it was common for Indian families to live in joint households both in their homeland and in the United States…
“It’s a way to ease immigration,” Professor Rudrappa said. “You help family out. Family members coming from India might not know how to drive, and grocery stores can be unnerving.”
This entire zeal to get up in peoples’ bidness is unnerving. Taxpayers should have the right to have three generations under the same roof, period. Landlords who rent homes to young single people aren’t doing anything illegal, either (and if they are, the Davis city government has a lot of work to do, since that’s how many of my friends spent their final years at college— in a house with a few other students). Littering the neighborhood is inexcusable; so is being an inconsiderate jerk about parking too many cars around one’s home. Those issues are valid, unlike the issues some of Iselin’s old-timers have with these furriners. Anyone in NJ want to tell us more than the grey lady did?
::
They are affecting desi families:
Rakesh Patel, 34, a technology worker at a New York investment bank, said he had his three-bedroom, two-story house built here seven years ago “for family and friends.” He and his wife, two children and his parents moved from a cramped apartment in Edison. Mr. Patel’s cousin’s sister has joined the household, and Mr. Patel’s sister and three family members may soon come to stay for a while. Other relatives often visit for months at a time.
While my parents never had the opportunity to do that, most of my other cousins, especially my family in Murrrland and New York, did. I remember those three bedroom apartments in the boogie down that had just as many siblings. The eldest was married with two children, the middle sibling was half of a newlywed couple and the youngest sib was single. That’s seven people. They didn’t even have cars. How was their share-and-care arrangement harming the nabe?
Such dwellings are part of our history as second gens. My father used to tell me that he came to this country alone, and if it hadn’t been for the kind white people who befriended him, he would have had no resources for figuring out the most basic questions. That’s why he said that it was our moral duty to do whatever we could to help the “new”, once we were established.
“Why not?” asked Mr. Patel, noting that he also stayed with his uncle when he first came to the United States from India in 1996. “I pay $9,000 a year in taxes.”
Tom Rokita, who lives across the street from the Patels and several other large South Asian families, said that cars had lately clogged the neighborhood, and garbage had drifted onto his well-tended garden.
“The mayor is clamping down on the violations very nicely,” said Mr. Rokita, who has lived in Iselin 45 years. Of his neighbors, he said: “I have no problem with them. Except for the litter.”
After an anonymous complaint, inspectors paid three separate visits to Mr. Patel’s home in May. Mr. Patel was surprised by the visit and said he had had a good relationship with town officials in the past, when he worked with them to make sure his basement met local regulations. It is now a place where his children play, and where his father, age 59, does his morning yoga.
Finally, inspectors determined that everyone living in the house belonged to one family, and found the property to be “in compliance.”
No shit.
Mayor McCormac conceded that many of the complaints had been unjustified and, as in Mr. Patel’s case, turned out to be cases of cultural differences in the definition of family more than illegal subdivisions.
I apologize for not including that part of the NYT story in my post— especially when it tickled my umbrage nerve and would have provided more context.
