Montgomery officials consider big cut to housing occupancy limit

The complaints — more than 1,300 in the past two fiscal years — are focused in areas with smaller and older homes and apartments in neighborhoods such as Wheaton and Silver Spring.

Some residents have complained of two- or three-bedroom homes in their neighborhood being filled with 10 to 12 unrelated adults who may be illegal immigrants.

These kinds of houses led to parking problems on residential streets and bring down property values, according to residents. But county employees found that almost all of the complaints were unfounded, in part because adults in overcrowded houses can easily skirt county zoning rules that prohibit more than five unrelated people to live in a single home simply by saying that they are all related.

County Executive Ike Leggett has proposed tightening regulations regarding residential parking and home-run businesses as a way to curb overcrowding, but County Council staff said those proposals don’t confront the problem head on.

Instead, the county should double the minimum number of square footage necessary per adult in each house or apartment, staff recommended.

Staff members suggested the county mirror Virginia’s zoning rules, and require a minimum of 300 square feet per adult for the first 1,200 square feet of a house and 500 square feet thereafter.

Instead, the county should double the minimum number of square footage necessary per adult in each house or apartment, staff recommended. Staff members suggested the county mirror Virginia’s zoning rules, and require a minimum of 300 square feet per adult for the first 1,200 square feet of a house and 500 square feet thereafter.

Currently, the county requires that a home have 150 square feet of floor space for the first occupant and at least an additional 100 square feet for every additional person living there, and doesn’t allow bathrooms, closets and hallways to count toward the total.

Those standards have been in place since 1962, said Jeff Zyontz, an attorney for the council. Under the current housing code, a single-family house of 1,800 square feet can legally accommodate 10 residents, Zyontz told a County Council panel.

The average square footage of new homes built in the county was more than 3,200 square feet in the first part of this decade. But some council members said concerns about overcrowding may be expressions of frustrations over the county’s changing socioeconomic landscape, and not because of illegal behavior.

v”The frustration is real,” said Councilman Michael Knapp, D-Germantown. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that the problem is a legal problem as much as it is the fact that people are frustrated because changes are taking place.”

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