As Montgomery County, Maryland considers a new law to allow more development of accessory dwelling units. The devil is in the details.
"Members of the Montgomery County Council continued Tuesday to hash out details of a proposal that would open additional parts of the county for the addition of accessory dwelling units at private houses," reports Dan Schere.
The changes to Montgomery County's accessory dwelling unit regulations are the result of legislation proposed by at-large council member Hans Riemer, first mentioned by Planetizen in February.
"At issue are several details such as whether the county’s current requirement of 1,200 square feet should be deleted, whether only to allow the units at existing homes and how much parking should be required," according to Schere.
Among the points of discussion at this weeks meeting was the potential to adjusting parking requirements for new ADUs built within a mile of existing Metro stations and future Purple Line stations.
As noted by Schere, there are already 472 accessory dwelling units scattered around the country, not counting those in municipalizes like Rockville and Gaithersburg. Many of those existing units are illegal, however, because they fail to conform to the zoning code.
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