People who repeatedly violate Montgomery County’s housing code by things like crowding too many unrelated people into one home or leaving yards unkempt would face a $750 — rather than $500 — a day fine, under proposals from County Executive Ike Leggett.
Leggett told The Examiner he’s backing sweeping changes to housing code policy, after hearing repeated complaints that county code enforcement is uneven, ineffective and undermining the quality of life for people in many parts of the county.
“We get tons of complaints,” Leggett said. “You take a house that works for a five person family and put ten adults and lots of children in there. It’s not safe first of all, then you can’t park everybody’s cars in that driveway — so people pave over the grass, park cars all over the sidewalks, that is what we are trying to get at as well.”
In addition to increasing fines from $500 to $750 a day for repeat offenders, Leggett wants county employees to work with Realtors to monitor and correct the number of bedrooms advertised in listings for single-family properties, restrict the number of vehicles and employees allowed to visit homes where no one is authorized to run a home business, and limit the number of cars that can be parked in somebody’s front yard.
“A house with three or four people in it won’t have ten pails of trash packed up there every few days,” Leggett said. “Proper code enforcement can indirectly impact the number of people in the house, which can be tougher to monitor from the county’s perspective.”
Don Becker, a board member of the Aspen Hill Civic Association, said his group has been pushing the county for years to establish an enforceable code.
“The county has had some regulations that weren’t really enforced very much,” Becker said. “This is a relatively low housing cost area for the county … it is changing from a more family friendly to a more transient area, with more rental units. People renting often don’t understand and aren’t as inclined to follow regulations so it needs to be clear for everybody.”
Becker said he hears a lot of gripes about commercial vehicles being parked on residential streets and on yards, something he worries “degrades” the appearance of his community and makes it so “people who live here can’t park in front of their own home.
