Unmarried With Children: Blended Family Vs. City -- Couple Fights Code Restriction In Illinois Town

CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill. - It's a '90s version of the Brady Bunch: a couple blending two families into one in a four-bedroom house in Crystal Lake.

But in the eyes of Crystal Lake city officials, the living arrangement is against the law.

That's because unlike the Bradys, the couple in Crystal Lake isn't married, and so technically there is more than a single family living in that single-family house.

The homeowner, Ed Batker, 44, has lived there for seven years with his three children, daughter Kayla, 10, and 7-year-old twin boys, Kyle and Derek. His girlfriend, Grace Eisenbraun, 39, recently moved in, along with her daughter, Michelle, 17.

But Crystal Lake officials say the arrangement violates a city code that prohibits more than five unrelated people from living together. They were tipped to the situation by an irate neighbor, who said the family was making too much noise.

The code, known as an occupancy law, is common across the Chicago area and in other regions, a vestige of an era when cities struggled to prevent people from loading up houses or apartments with more tenants than they were designed to serve, thus guarding against slums and blight.

The laws in recent years have come under attack by critics who contend communities are using them to keep out minorities, group homes and the poor.

But the Crystal Lake case raises new issues: Have these housing laws failed to adapt to the changing American family? And are these

community officials overstepping their authority when they take a law clearly intended to prevent one thing and apply it to what has become a common arrangement in thousands of American households?

"It does violate the civil rights of people," said Nadine Strossen, national president of the American Civil Liberties Union. "When housing codes are used to force apart extended families, who live together to make ends meet, the results can be devastating."

Crystal Lake officials say their code was created in the 1960s to crack down on those who illegally converted their homes into rooming houses or transient motels. Because Eisenbraun and Batker aren't married, the couple is viewed by city officials as running a boarding house.

"We have a law on the books, and it has to be enforced evenly across the board," said City Manager Joe Misurelli. "It's a violation because there are two families in the same home. This is not a moral issue."

City officials say they issue about six citations a year, mostly to people who convert their homes into rooming houses. About 10 years ago, a couple faced a similar predicament, but they married and the city dropped all charges.

Batker and Eisenbraun almost did the same thing, but then decided that City Hall had no business suggesting that they hastily make such an important personal commitment simply to comply with a zoning law.

"We have no choice but to fight this because we aren't going to let them tell us when to get married," said Batker, who vows to take the case to court unless Crystal Lake backs down. "It's silly that a dinky little town like Crystal Lake would even suggest we are not a family."

Occupancy laws have so far withstood legal tests, and the U.S. Supreme Court has twice ruled that they are constitutional.

But civil-rights advocates continue to challenge the laws, saying they discriminate against people who, because of culture or out of necessity, might be more inclined to live together in large numbers - such as the poor, immigrants and disabled people in group homes.

But civil-rights and fair-housing advocates said they cannot recall an occupancy-law dispute as unusual as the one playing out in Crystal Lake.

"I've not heard of this type of situation," said Aurie Pennick, president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Council for Metropolitan Communities, one of the oldest fair-housing organizations in the Chicago area. "It seems rather unusual for an occupancy code to be applied in a case like this one."

Eisenbraun, a bank supervisor, and Batker, a manufacturing-company technician, say the four-bedroom house can accommodate them and the four children without putting the neighborhood at risk of blight.

"We are no different from any other family in the neighborhood," Eisenbraun said.

But at least one neighbor would argue with that. Soon after Eisenbraun and her daughter moved in last fall, neighbor Jim Gordon, 66, complained to the city about loud activity at the house, including people coming and going all day, and noisy cars and dogs.

For a while, Eisenbraun's second child, Jason, 19, was living at the house, but he has moved out.

"My big gripe is the transience over there," Gordon said. "It's nothing more than a rooming house."

The couple was cited by the city in January and was threatened with fines of up to $500 a day and possible eviction.

Eisenbraun said the couple has decided to fight the law by filing an appeal with Crystal Lake's Zoning Board of Appeals on grounds the couple and their kids are a family. If the appeal fails, the couple said they will consider challenging the law in the courts.

Civil-rights organizations vow to watch the case closely, saying Crystal Lake is getting into some tricky territory when it tries to define what constitutes relationships and a family.

Pennick, of the Chicago-based fair-housing group, said the Crystal Lake couple may have the basis for a discrimination complaint: "If they argue they are being discriminated against because of their lack of marriage, then they could be covered under fair-housing laws."