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]I have a shed that borders my neighbor's property that is grandfathered in because it was built long ago.  [b]So I can convert it into an accessory dwelling pretty easily[/b], and there's nothing my neighbor can do about it.  What a mess.[/quote]

Sure you can, if "pretty easily" means:

1. providing an additional parking space (unless you're within 1 mile of a Metro station)
2. you don't mind having the same address as your tenant in the accessory dwelling
3. you add a window that can be easily opened to every room in your shed
4. the bedroom has at least 70 square feet of floor area, is at least 7 feet wide, and has a window you can use for emergency egress
5. the kitchen has a 30" wide stove (burners + oven) and a standard-sized refrigerator plus shelves and counter space
6. you add exterior lighting and a walkway (if there isn't already one)
7. you add a bathroom
8. you add at least 2 electrical outlets to each non-kitchen room, 3 to the kitchen on a separate 30-amp circuit, and GFIs to the bathroom outlets
9. you add a furnace and water heater

plus other miscellaneous requirements.

So that would have to be a big and expensive shed.

Also, why should your neighbor be able to do anything about it? Should your neighbor also be able to do something about the color you choose to paint your front door?[/quote]

Alright good point[/quote]

The thing is that some of these requirements are already in place regarding accessory apartments (parking spaces, windows, etc) but they are rarely enforced.  The illegal boarding homes in our neighborhood have plenty of violations, but the County either chooses not to enforce them, or doesn’t have the manpower.

Either way, these guidelines are already being ignored and the new ones will likely also be ignored.

When slim landlords are already illegally renting homes, they just care about the money they can get.  They don’t care about following County regulations.  [/quote]

If they're already ignoring all of the regulations anyway, then why worry about the ADU regulation? It's not like they're sitting around thinking, "Currently I'm not allowed to build an additional structure on my rental property and rent it out too, so I'm going to wait for this ADU regulation to come into effect, which explicitly forbids an additional rental structure accessory to a rental house, and then disregard it."[/quote]

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