Reply to MoCo Planning Board Meeting

Forum Index » Metropolitan DC Local Politics

Reply to "MoCo Planning Board Meeting - Upzoning"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]They are not even requiring one parking spot per dwelling unit in some circumstances. There are many disabled or elderly people that legitimately need parking access to participate in society. Not to mention low and moderate income households that need to commute to work. Streetside parking is not a guaranteed spot and this will be unworkable for people with mobility issues that cannot walk long distances to their house. What about people that cannot ride the public transit because they are immunocompromised. Eliminating parking minimums altogether is discriminatory towards elderly people. persons with disabilities and other medical conditions.reducing them is fine, but there are many people that legitimately need a vehicle to have equitable access to society.  We are effective excluding them (in many circumstances) from affordable housing if units are not required to have at least one spot. [/quote]

They are not FORBIDDING parking. Builders will be allowed to provide as much parking as they want.[/quote]

Developers don’t care about the well-being or county residents or marginalized communities. They only care about profits and they will not condenser negative externalities of their projects if the county does not force them to do so. The whole point of development standards is to provide a minimum baseline that ensures developers will not do things that have an excessively negative impact on overall community health and welfare. The market will not provide a solution to ensuring that elderly and disabled people have equitable access to society because it is more profitable to exclude them (in most circumstances). My family member is currently undergoing treatment for cancer and they literally cannot be around other people (so no public transit). This is a very rare disease and they would not have access to appropriate medical facilities (over 50 miles away) if they did not have a parking/a car to drive to the cancer treatment center. Letting  developers do whatever they “want” without regard for the consequences/impact on the community is a recipe for disaster. I am not opposed to the MM idea, but it needs to be more narrowly targeted to ensure that growth does not outpace the availability of infrastructure and public services, or negatively impact vulnerable community members. 
[/quote]

Developers care about profits, therefore if there is demand for parking, they will build parking.[/quote]

Market demand will not solve issues like school overcrowding, pollution, traffic congestion. My whole point is that things like disability inclusive development, impervious surface coverage limits, tree canopy preservation, 
ect, will mostly not happen if you let developers do whatever there is “demand for”. There are very real environmental and social consequences for letting developers do whatever they “want”.Developers will not give adequate consideration to social impacts or environmental harms if they are not forced to do it. MM housing is fine, but I think it would be more prudent to start with special use permits for multiplex housing with an annual cap on the number of units before deciding whether this standard should be lifted altogether. This will allow the county time to evaluate the real-world impact before making a very consequential and largely irreversible change to zoning regulations. Establishing by right development zoning (that can increase density up to 4x) will create a vested property interest that may give property owners standing to sue (for changes to zoning) and limit the counties ability to enhance or rework policies if necessary. [/quote]

I thought we were talking about parking - specifically, getting rid of minimum parking requirements.

Nobody is advocating for getting rid of building codes or stormwater laws or permits.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics