A civics lesson of sorts was brought to the Baltimore City Zoning Commission last Tuesday.
If any high school or university educator wanted to teach civics and community issues in its most pure form, this was it.
It involved the request by a private resident, living in the Cross Country area, for zoning approval for a day care center in her home.
The home owner had self-limiting conditions on the zoning change. Knowing that there were concerns by neighbors over the center, she proposed conditions. For example, one condition would limit the day care center’s tenure to one school year in her home, from September through June, 2010. This would give her time to find a bigger space, and if she couldn’t locate one within the school year, she would have to start the zoning approval process over again.
Another condition made it clear that the hours of drop-off and pick-up of the center’s 15 children would be staggered and limited. Parents would be prohibited from leaving their cars. Only staffers would be able to unbuckle or buckle children into car seats.
The zoning hearing was preceded by a parlor meeting a week earlier in a neighbor’s home.
Some saw this as an Orthodox vs. non-Orthodox issue.
Yet at the hearing, it was clear that this was more about two generations with different outlooks on their environments.
A couple of the long-time neighbors articulated it very well. When they moved in to the neighborhood, perhaps they were the first owners of a home, or once or twice removed from the original owner. But the community was typically residential and only residential. There weren’t basement businesses, day care centers or even home-based minyans.
One long-time resident, who happens to be Orthodox, was opposed to the day care center, not because he has anything against children at all. He just saw this as yet another form of chipping away of the sanctity of a quiet, residential neighborhood. Standing on its own, the day care center isn’t the challenge for some of the neighbors. But when added to everything else that pulls away from a residential area, it’s just one thing more.
After the meeting was over, a friend who was at the meeting came over to me, and said that maybe the best thing for he and his wife to do is find another place to live. His reasoning had nothing to do with being against the day care center at all. He just felt that change happens and for neighborhoods to survive, there should be a natural turnover to younger families and their needs.
Still, there is a very definite feeing of resentment among some concerning the basement businesses. There is a concern that perhaps there are some lacking appropriate zoning and licensing.
There is a feeling that they impact the privacy of the home owner, the value of the home and even the sanctity of the neighborhood.
And if they believe this, then it must really be hurting them.
In some respects, it could be more a validation of their standing as neighbors. In other words, “Hey, I’ve lived here for 30 years, don’t you think that merits some sort of level of respect? Or doesn’t that merit some sort of input?”
And I think it does. I think it behooves the newer generation of homeowners to at least try to understand why the more long-term neighbors might feel slighted or not validated.
The basement business zoning and licensing issue and any violations is of genuine concern.
But that aside for now, nobody should ever feel compelled to move from their home, especially if they love their house and have invested in it.
So I disagree a little bit with my friend. A neighborhood should be about young families, families with teens, empty nest couples, single residents and others learning to live respectfully among one another.
Reaching out and working hard to understand a neighbor’s needs and motives would be positive.
The home owner who asked for a zoning approval for her day care center?
She was approved by the city.
None of the conditions she introduced to self-limit her day care center were implemented by the panel.
She has to provide a parking space for an employee. She has a driveway.
Now we’ll see how the community reacts.
It is after all a living civics lesson.

Unfortunately, this process can be a slippery slope for a neighborhood.  Consider the house on Labyrinth between Gist and Reisterstown Road.  This single family dwelling was expanded and the neighborhood agreed to zoning changes based on certain presumptions.  The house grew to the point where it was no longer really usable as a private dwelling and it now has substantially altered that neighborhood with parking and traffic issues.  The house at the corner of Park Heights and Strathmore that is under renovation right now has expanded to mega-levels.  One wonders if this is going to be one of those fait accompli things that is going to be presented for a variance after the fact for a use as something other than a residence.  Even when variances are uncontested, there are few, if any mechanisms for enforcement that will not destroy relationships and escalate into enmity.  Yes, we need safe, legal, monitored day care and those home-based businesses are a means of paying the mortgage, particularly in these hard times.  But when we allow renovation of a house into a barn and then retroactively allow for barnyard zoning because that is the only fit use, we are destroying neighborhoods.