For years, the Provo Municipal Council and property owners have wrestled with how many unrelated people can live in a house.

Now, if a local government watchdog group gets its way, the voters will resolve the question.

Provocitizens.net is circulating a petition to put its "Fair Housing Initiative" on the municipal ballot. The initiative would bar any ordinance that discriminates on the basis of "marital status, family status, real property ownership or educational status." It would remove the current limitations on the number of unrelated people allowed to live in certain neighborhoods, as well as allow cousins and in-laws to be considered part of families.

Given the acrimony that has surrounded the zoning issue, a public referendum may be the best way to resolve the question, but only if the resolution does more than just tear down the status quo.

As it now stands, zoning laws only allow two or three unrelated people to live in a house together in certain Provo neighborhoods. The ordinance also does not count cousins and in-laws as family members when determining relations.

Municipal Councilman George O. Stewart, a former mayor, told the Daily Herald that the restrictions are designed to keep college students from overrunning neighborhoods. Proponents of the restrictions have maintained that allowing college students and other unrelated renters into neighborhoods destabilizes schools, churches and other social networks and cause families to go elsewhere.

While there are legitimate concerns about traffic and parking when homes being turned into rental units for students, the rule does appear to discriminate against people who are not part of a "traditional" family. The law does not bar a couple with 12 children from moving into a neighborhood even though they may have a greater effect on traffic, especially if there are several teen-age drivers in the brood, than four college students renting a house together.

Brown said the council has resisted efforts by his group to make a more reasonable and equitable change in the law, hence the decision to put it on the ballot. That's why we have the initiative process.

But the only problem we see is the fact that the proposal does not go far enough. Sure, it calls for doing away with potentially discriminatory zoning regulations, but it does not propose a solution, such as a specific across-the-board restriction that would maintain order in a neighborhood without discriminating. It just says that restrictions cannot discriminate.

Brown said he would leave it to the council to decide what to do at that point, assuming that he can gather enough signatures for his petition and that it gets approved. He has until today to get 3,100 signatures to be on the ballot.

But that's not a way to solve a problem. It's one thing to say that something should be done away, but voters deserve to know what would be done instead.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A5.

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