Reply to Montgomery County zoning: Council wants to change zoning throughout the county to multi-family

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The problem is that the population has grown to such a level that our "inner suburbs" would be dense urban city in pretty much any other global city. The inner suburbs need to urbanize; we are running out of space and have a lot more people in the metro area. Similarly, DC needs to go denser and higher. I live in a SFH neighborhood in NW DC (R-40 zoning); its ridiculous that builders cannot convert any homes into multi-unit properties. And my elderly neighbors will fight them tooth and nail.

These things are starting to happen, but it will take time. The dying off of Boomers and elderly who bought their houses 30-50 years ago for a song will quicken the pace of upzoning.[b] You're hamstringing two generations of young families that need a home and are spending 40-50%+ of their wages on housing. This isn't working. [/b][/quote]

Yes, the fundamental thinking is:

1. I've got mine
2. If you have enough money, you too can have what I've got
3. If you don't have enough money, too bad

[b]My opinion is that this ADU proposal doesn't go anywhere near what we need, and yet here people are, acting as though this very, very, very minimal proposal were the end of all that's sacred.
[/b]
[/quote]

Agreed, this proposal is simply a Band-Aid for a gushing wound.

Look at it this way: Bethesda is less than 7 miles from the White House. In any other global city, Bethesda would be chock-full of dense urban dwellings. 7 miles in Paris, London, or Tokyo gets you nowhere and you won't encounter any neighborhood with REQUIRED SFH zoning. The island of Manhattan is 13.4 miles long and you won't see SFHs REQUIRED by zoning.

It's ridiculous. Families need homes and the zoning in the DC metro areas makes housing prohibitively expensive.

If you're worried about over-crowded schools? More families mean we need to build more schools - let's pressure our local leaders to do so. WOTP DC is in dire need of more schools and soon; the school-age population is set to increase by 15-20% in the next 5 years. Bethesda also needs more schools. That's how you respond to needing more seats. For every old person that dies in my MIL's Bethesda neighborhood, either (1) a young family moves in to an expensive house that usually in dire need of repairs and updates or (2) it's sold to a flipper who then sells the house to a family. All these people want to put their kids in Bethesda schools. And yet I hear incessant whining from MoCO retirees who sent their kids to MoCo public schools.

Enough of the ridiculous "got mine" attitudes. [/quote]

DC is NOT NYC.  If that is what you want, why would you not move to NYC?

DC and the DC suburbs have their own different character and many people like that about the area.  DC doesn’t have to be like Tokyo or NYC.[/quote]

And Chevy Chase and Bethesda aren't DC.  This is a poorly thought out proposal-we'll just have more traffic, more overcrowding in the popular schools that are already overcrowded, and pissed off neighbors selling because there's an ADU right on their property line because the Council hasn't given sufficient thought to all the old houses in this area with limited grandfathered  setbacks.[/quote]

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