This blog features case law related to real estate, land use, zoning, and municipal law in Pennsylvania

Tag: family

Transient Lodging Enterprise Permitted under Single Family Residential Dwelling Use

In this appeal out of Monroe County, the Commonwealth Court was asked to determine whether the ZHB and Court of Common Pleas of Monroe County properly interpreted the Township’s Zoning Ordinance as excluding transient lodging enterprises in districts where only a single-family dwelling use was permitted.  In reversing the trial court’s affirmation of the ZHB’s decision, the Court found that such a use, pursuant to the definitions in the Ordinance, was permitted.

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More Than Three Unrelated Individuals Still Do Not Make a “Family”

In this recent Commonwealth Court case several landlords renting single-family properties to students challenged the constitutionality of the Philadelphia Zoning Ordinance’s definition of “family.” Specifically they sought to invalidate the exclusion of “more than three persons unrelated by blood, marriage or adoption” from the definition. In the court’s decision it affirmed the general principles that in Pennsylvania the constitutionality of a zoning ordinance is subject to rational basis review and that ordinances may exclude certain living arrangements from the definition of “family” based on biological and legal bonds.

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