In college towns, neighborhood sharing means more than lending a cup of sugar on a Saturday morning.

Often, near colleges and universities, singles and families live side-by-side. When there are zoning laws that regulate these neighborhoods, issues involving property rights, discrimination and city preservation come up.

"A lot of college towns struggle with how to maintain certain parts of the city as a family atmosphere," said Councilman David Knecht. "If you don't have the right mix of owner occupants and families, you can't keep the schools open and provide an environment for families to thrive."

Knecht introduced a proposal to limit the number of singles in new houses in Residential Conservation zones.

Current zoning laws allow three singles to live in a house in Residential Conservations Zones. Knecht's proposal would limit it to two.

The public will comment before the planning commission for a second time at the Jan 8 city council meeting. Then the planning commission will decide what recommendation to make to the city council.

If the amendment is passed, the land-use committee made some recommendations to soften the blow of it.

One is that if the owner is an occupant, there can be three singles in a home. Another would make sure that the legal living situation people are in before any amendment is passed will continue indefinitely, said Gary McGinn, director of the Department of Community Development.

"Right now the standard would only apply to new neighborhoods," Knecht said. "Anything already built would be unaffected."

"The question the council will address is, 'is it good for Provo?'" said Neil Lindberg, city council attorney. "We're debating whether it's good public policy."

Those opposed to the proposal say it's not. But that isn't the only thing that bothers them. They were already bothered by the fact that there is a restriction of three singles per house.

"We're protesting that it's already three," said Roger Brown, a single homeowner working in Provo.

The law is discrimination based on marital status, which violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, he said.

One former Provo city official agrees.

"It's really no different to say that if you're black or Protestant, you can only have two people living in your house," he said. "It's a classification based on marital status."

Those against the proposal say also that the amendment would be stepping all over their private property rights.

"The city builds and maintains the streets," said Theran Harmon, a BYU graduate and father. "They have jurisdiction there, but inside someone's home they shouldn't interfere."

He felt the real issues were not being addressed by the proposal.

"If we're going to talk about parking, let's talk about parking," he said to the council. "If it's about noise, let's talk about noise."

Councilmen Knecht believes there are more issues than just parking and noise.

"We need to balance property rights of the people who have already invested with people now investing," he said. "The exercise of unrestricted property rights tramples the rights of others. There has to be limits."

He explained situations where contractors purchased land they said would be for families and then found loopholes in the law to market them to singles. Meanwhile, schools and churches are built without families to fill them or families buy into a neighborhood that turns out to be mostly singles.

Knecht also explained that school districts are struggling because there aren't enough kids to fill them.

Melanie McCord, a neighborhood representative, called it "a trend reaching crisis."

She said 50 percent of Provo City School District students turn over in a year and schools are losing students.

"Property that could go to families with children is too expensive because students will pay more," she said.

McGinn explained why zoning is necessary. "The whole nature of zoning is putting different groups together that are more compatable with each other," McGinn said. "I've got kids and I wouldn't want to raise them just south of campus."

While there are many zoning laws in Provo and Orem, there are many residents in violation of them, according to McGinn.

"Some students have no clue about the zoning laws and their landlords don't tell them," McGinn said. "Some just ignore the law because it is only enforced if someone complains."

In a 1974 case, Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, the Supreme Court decided a zoning law just like the one proposed by Knecht is constitutional.

Bruce Boraas was owner of a house with five roommates, all students at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. They lived in a six-bedroom house about seven miles from the university in the Village of Belle Terre.

They challenged the constitutionality of a zoning law prohibiting more than two unrelated persons to live in a house while permitting any number of family members.

The students contended that the ordinance violated equal protection rights, among other things.

Still, the majority decision said the ordinance was constitutional because it bore a rational relationship to a permissible state objective, thus not violating equal protection.

The dissenting opinion said that the ordinance was unconstitutional because it burdened tenant's fundamental rights of association and privacy guaranteed in the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

It said the village's interests could be protected without discriminating on the basis of constitutionally protected choices of life style.