Montgomery County zoning: Council wants to change zoning throughout the county to multi-family
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Anonymous
Very easy to enforce. The tax records show whether the property is your primary residence. You can look that up in the state property tax database. |
Anonymous
No, it is not. |
Anonymous
Good grief. Yes, it is. Show us the evidence you're basing your statement on. |
Anonymous
Winner winner chicken dinner! The current council is very disconnected from the voters. They don't poll or get feedback on issues. They ask the 2-3 people they hired to agree with everything that comes out of their mouth. Those 2-3 people do their job and say agree with them. There is a lot of jumping on whatever progressive trend they see out west without realizing that those trends may make sense and be popular with the citizens out there but not here. What sucks is that eventually this will get reversed because it is so unpopular. At that point though reversal will displace people in illegal rentals/airBNBs and but people who counted on the airBNB proceeds in economic peril. |
Anonymous
Sounds like someone who is crabby that the Council didn't vote their way. |
Anonymous
You would think, right? Doesn't work that way, however. I'll tell you how it played out for one house in our neighborhood. Someone purchased the home and put an entire second level on the house. Owner rents it out to no less than 5 families. He has no rental license, and collects rent in cash. We know that he does not live there, because the property tax database shows that he lives elsewhere. When he was approached by the County to explain, he claims that he is renting to 'family' and that he is not charging rent. The county can't prove that he's charging rent (remember, cash only), and so he's been making tons of unreported income for the past two years on this illegal rental. |
Anonymous
True, that the landlord doesn't care anyway. However, it makes it much easier for the landlords to add in additional units. The landlords want to maximize the amount of rent they are collecting on their properties. Plain and simple. That is all they care about. They don't care about the schools. They don't care about the neighborhood. They don't care who or how many people they rent to. They certainly don't care about the overcrowding. This allows the landlords, who are already profiting from illegal rentals, to have even MORE people living on their properties. So they can earn even MORE money. It's a fantastic set up for those who have learned how to work the system. Lots of cash to be made. |
Anonymous
Would love to think that, but I think MoCo is so liberal that maybe most voters do actually support the County Council. Who knows? I guess we'll see. I thought the ADU thing would NOT pass, yet it passed unanimously. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
How is that relevant to whether or not it's the owner's primary residence? |
Anonymous
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To be PP in a similar situation where the owner is illegally renting to a family here’s what you do:
We had that happen in our neighborhood, we repeatedly made complaints until the families were gone. I’m afraid to list the neighborhood in MoCo. There were no less than 15 people living in one 4 bedroom home. They never cut the grass, their unwanted trash/mail would fly over on other’s properties. There would be loud/drunken parties past all hours of the night on the weekends. Some of the young teens would skip school and have ‘mid-day parties. Someone hit our parked car (we caught it on camera). Concerned neighbors raised cane, we had a rotation of neighbors call the county or write an email everyday. Stay vigilant, we do not want California ‘progressive’ laws out here. San Francisco is not a pretty city, behind the dirt there. |
Anonymous
?????? |
Anonymous
Thanks for the concrete suggestions. Neighbors are definitely unhappy about the situation. We have the same issues - parties (fine on weekends, but even during the week?!), trash everywhere, etc. |
Anonymous
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I'm from CA and agree that the people on the county council seem to be enamored within anything that the Bay Area does and calls progressive without a ounce of understanding.
In CA, ADUs make sense and the majority of citizens support them. Our lots and houses are much, much smaller so an ADU lets us have a guest room/guest house. There are many retirees who stay in place due to the property tax freeze but struggle to make ends meet with the rest of the high cost of living. The ADUs give them a much needed income source. The rental inventory is so low here that rents can easily double in a year. This happens at the same time as they tech giants bring in thousands of new workers every month. The ADUs are not being illegally rented to 12 people. They are going for a high price to single tech workers or the the couple who is priced out of renting because they don't make over 100K a year. The ADUs here are also getting used a lot by people's working age kids. Their kids can not afford housing in the area so if they land a job in tech or just want to stay in the area, an ADU on their parent's property is the only way to do it. In Montgomery County, I have to scratch my head and wonder why. Rents are relatively cheap, not rising dramatically and the rental inventory always has vacant units. Retirees do not age in place here due to the taxes and climate. There doesn't seem to be a huge market for professionals that want to live in some else's backyard. AirBNB for people who live close in could be attractive but there are a lot of AirBNBs in DC. I'm not sure out of towners will decide gee I really want to visit Rockville , Olney or Silver Spring this summer. No one has every heard of these burbs outside the DMV. |
Anonymous
Relative to San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the US. San Francisco has terrible housing policies. Nobody would want to copy them - and Montgomery County's ADU regulation doesn't. |