More Retirement Communities, Please?

A plea for more retirement communities may seem a bit out of character to those who know me.

I'm better known for proposing revisions of housing code to allow for more and better "aging in place", including revisions which would both tighten and ease getting zoning exceptions for "accessory apartments" and "accessory buildings".

How would I ease the process? I'd make it effectively a "shall issue" process, provided certain conditions were met. And how would I tighten the process? I'd make those "certain conditions" include that accessory apartments and accessory buildings could be used to house only members of immediate family, and only for purposes of housing children, or housing elders.

Montgomery County has, in some neighborhoods such as Aspen Hill, suffered significantly as newcomers applied for permits for single-family homes on properties where already there stood a single-family home. This has led to doubling -- or more than doubling, in some cases -- of home sizes. Also, in many cases the occupants of the new space were members of extended families, in many cases with only the most tenuous degrees of relatedness, such as "second cousin twice removed of my daughter-in-law's sister-in-law". Yet by making any claim of relatedness whatsoever, the County code allows occupancy of over seven adults in a single-family detached residential domicile. This lack of definition of "relatedness" has allowed single-family detached houses in established neighborhoods to become worker barracks with paved yards on which are illegally parked the work fleets and incidental trailers full of equipment.

This is what MBAs might call a "horizontal" scheme of residential densification, though it is also illegally a conversion of exclusively single-family residential properties to multi-family mixed residential/light-industrial.

Many such schemes try -- after the fact and after long-term hounding by overworked code-enforcement authorities -- to legitimize themselves by applying for zoning exceptions as "accessory apartments" or "accessory buildings".

The zoning law should be clarified to prohibit such "horizontal" schemes, and instead should legitimize and speed "vertical" establishment of accessory residential zoning exceptions.

In this way, instead of having single-family homes occupied by one broad "family" all of working-age adults of about the same age, and all of their equipment as well, you would have single family homes which actually have only a single family in them. However, that single family might have separate domiciles all on the same property, with one residence for the parent generation, one residence for the child generation, and one residence for the grandchild generation.

Failure to adapt the County Code to allow for this will simply force the creation of even more retirement communities, rather than allowing people in the community to retire in the community.

An article from the Washington Post provides us with an analysis of population trends issued by the US Census.

Due to massive immigration, legal and otherwise, the population of the US is expected to increase from the present 302 millions to about 440 millions by the year 2050. By roughly 2040 "non-hispanic whites" will no longer be the majority. As the "hispanic" birth rate is very high among US-born citizens, and as the massive flows of immigration (legal or otherwise) from Spanish-speaking countries continues, by mid-century the population classified as "hispanic" is expected to at least triple. Non-hispanic "whites" will increase their population by less than 2 percent until about 2030 or 2040 and is expected to show significant declines in population after that time.

The vast majority of US citizens born during the so-called "Baby Boom" elected to reproduce at a rate which would have stabilized US population at about 290 millions around 2020 to 2030 or so, with significant population declines thereafter eventually stabilizing the population at around 150-200 millions, which is widely regarded as "sustainable" with renewable lifestyles and agricultural practices.

From the article:

Hispanics, including immigrants and their descendants as well as U.S.-born residents whose American roots stretch back generations, are expected to account for the most growth among minorities. That population is expected to nearly triple by 2050, growing from about one in six residents to one in three.

The black and Asian populations are each expected to increase about 60 percent, with the black share rising from 14 to 15 percent by 2050 and the Asian share jumping from 5 to 9 percent.

The number of people who identify themselves as being from two or more races is also expected to grow, more than tripling to 16.2 million, or 4 percent of the population.

By contrast, the non-Hispanic, single-race white population is expected to grow by less than 2 percent, reducing its share of the overall population from 66 to 46 percent. That group is projected to decline in the 2030s and 2040s, as more members die than are born in or move to the United States.

However, the 65-and-older population is expected to remain mostly white because of the number of whites born during the post-World War II baby boom. By 2030, all boomers will be 65 or older; by 2050, that age group will have more than doubled and will account for more than one in five residents, compared with one in eight today.

Similarly, the 85-and-older population is expected to more than triple, accounting for about 4 percent of U.S. residents in 2050, compared with fewer than 2 percent today.

The percentage of the population that is of working age will drop from 63 to 57 percent. As is the case with children, the working-age population is projected to become majority-minority before 2050. By mid-century, it is expected to be 30 percent Hispanic, 15 percent black and nearly 10 percent Asian.

With 1 in 5 people projected to be retired people, we need to either revise County code so that these folks can age in place, or we had better build an awful lot of retirement communities so that they can have someplace to live, or perhaps we could just drive them right out of the county.

My Goodness, the Gazette Regains Its Integrity

The yanked article on increasing numbers of day-laborers congregating at impromptu non-CASA pickup sites has been restored, at a different location.

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In an entirely unrelated article, the Gazette reports on allegations of prosecutorial and police fabrications of racism as motive for murder:

[...]
[Detric Lewarren Thompson, 28,]'s parents believe that Montgomery County Police have pinned the beating death on their son as retribution for him having avoided two other drug prosecutions last year, and said Thompson lives in Frederick County.

Acknowledging his son’s criminal record, Thompson’s father, Leo Thompson, is adamant that his son would not turn to violent crime, and is especially outraged by the suggestion that his son said he was targeting Hispanics in the burglary, as described in police charging documents.

When Thompson was arrested on March 8, he admitted to breaking into the apartment and to being on drugs, according to charging documents. The documents state that he told the arresting officer that he broke into the apartment ‘‘because Hispanics live there and I hate them. They are taking all our jobs.”

‘‘The Montgomery County Police Department has created a situation that’s racist. It’s racial and everything else you can imagine,” said Leo Thompson. ‘‘That whole thing makes it sound like we’re trying to start a race war. They made it up. And they did it so they could put somebody to a damn crime.”
[...]

Time will tell and a jury will decide as to the guilt or innocence of Detric Lewarren Thompson, in the matter of the Feb. 17 murder of Aureliano Evelio Miranda-Fuentes.

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Moving right along, despite the statements in a recent candidate's forum event, by the Washington Post's endorsee for the office of County Council, District 4, more or less to the effect that "gangs are just children who like to dress funny and pretend to be dangerous", the Gazette reports on an allegedly gang-related shooting incident at Albert Einstein HS in Wheaton. An accidental discharge of a weapon brought to the attention of authorities that multiple handguns had been brought to school...

[...]
Five of the six students were charged. A 14-year-old boy, a 15-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl, all from Silver Spring, were charged as juveniles. The 15-year-old boy was charged with first-degree burglary, theft over $500, reckless endangerment and a series of handgun charges, including unlawful possession of a regulated firearm with ammunition by a minor. The 14-year-old boy was charged with the same handgun-related charges. He was not charged with burglary or theft. They were taken to the Alfred D. Noyes Children’s Center. The 15-year-old female was charged with conspiracy to commit burglary.

Einstein students Jose Ramos, 16, of the 2500 block of Weisman Road in Silver Spring, and Geovani Lazabara, 17, of the 3900 block of Isbell Street in Silver Spring, were charged with three counts each of possession of a regulated firearm and possession of a regulated firearm by a minor, and one count each of illegal sale of a regulated firearm, carrying and⁄or transporting a handgun about their person, and carrying and possessing a handgun on public⁄school property.
[...]

(Lazbara, interestingly enough, lives in the exact same smallish neighborhood -- Connecticut Avenue Park, just south and east of Aspen Hill's Wheaton Woods neighborhood -- which was for a while home to Serial Bank-Robbing White Supremacists Richard Lee Guthrie and Peter Kevin Langan back in the 1970s. No reasonable person would even think of establishing a linkage, this is just co-incidence... or a neighborhood with deep problems.)

Allegedly the guns were to be delivered to one Raul Garcia, 20, of the 12000 block of Centerhill Street, just across Connecticut Avenue and a few blocks down the road, in the Connecticut Avenue Estates neighborhood. Garcia allegedly would find customers for the stolen firearms.

Allegedly, all of the individuals involved have ties to two different gangs.

The Washington Post coverage of the story is rather more detailed, says that police reported that there had been a fight near Einstein last week which took on aspects of a racial fight, and unsubstantiated rumors have been circulated that this was shaping up to be a gang war between elements of the Mara Salvatrucha -- an exceptionally violent transnational criminal organization with roots in Los Angeles and El Salvador, mostly notable for hacking people with machetes and for making friends and gaining the trust of their intended victims -- and an unspecified local African-American gang.

According the the Post reporting, police indicated that the handguns were burglarized "to make money". Astute readers may reasonably conjecture that the alleged burglars knew that people were looking to buy guns, and felt they could profit by serving a need. One may also reasonably suspect that other guns may already be wending their way to Wheaton -- as if there was any shortage of them there -- to find a ready hand to aim them at a fellow student at Albert Einstein HS, one of the most poverty-enrolling schools in Montgomery County.

My Ideals Come from my Family

I'm Thomas Hardman, from Aspen Hill. It will help you to understand me and my ideals if you know more about my family.

I never married, and have no children. My ancestry is mostly German-American, of the "old school". We're not Amish but some of us arrived on the same boats at the same time in history, before the American Revolutionary War.

My father started his life on a Kansas farm, where his family suffered through both the Dust Bowl and the Depression. He fought in the Mediterranean and North African theater for the US Navy in an outfit called the "Beachjumpers". Their heroism and effectiveness in the Second World War is well known and something of a legend in the community of Naval historians. After his return to the US, he met and married my mother, an office worker mostly raised in Detroit but born near Lebanon PA of an old established family with roots that include a known fighter in the Revolution.

After they married, kids came along, I am the youngest.

My father worked for years at the Helium Refinery in Shiprock NM and I was born in San Juan County Hospital in Farmington, New Mexico, USA. My mother was working for the US Public Health Service. Shortly before I was born, my father was disabled by a heart attack, and when there arose an opportunity for my mother to transfer to a much better-paid job in Rockville, MD, the family relocated here. Over the years, as modernizing medicine improved my father's health, he found work with Montgomery County Public Schools as an audio-visual repair technician, a position from which he retired well.

My mother finished out her career with the Federal government as a high ranking manager at the Environmental Protection Agency, where she was instrumental in promoting the cause of gender equality and equal opportunities. She worked afterwards as a manager for a regional Church organization, traveling widely to help start new congregations all over the Mid-Atlantic region.

My sisters are both retired career government workers.

I attended Montgomery County Public schools from first to twelfth grade, graduating in June 1976 from Robert E Peary HS on Arctic Avenue in Aspen Hill. I have been here for almost my entire life.

My parents split many years ago, after I graduated, and my father is in his nineties, visited daily in his retirement home by his wife. He needs to be there due to his arthritis and heart condition.

My mother is almost as elderly, though much more healthy, thanks to modern medicine and good family heritage. We are old-school German-Americans and where medical needs don't demand it, we don't put our elders out to pasture in retirement communities, though of course they are certainly free to choose it. I am the primary caretaker of my elderly mother, who is very attached to her lovely house which she has scrupulously kept since 1963.

As a family of lifelong career civil servants, and with a long family history of distinguished military service, we are of course a family of modest means, and no debts whatsoever, who believe very strongly in putting and keeping money in the bank and in real-estate.

With two parents who grew up into young adults in the Depression, I have always been taught the benefits of frugality. I have further learned that "if you can't pay cash for it, you must learn to do without". That's a philosophy that will guide me, if elected, on the County Council.

When you borrow money from the bank, actually you're borrowing other people's money. When you don't repay your loans, actually, you are effectively stealing other people's money. That's pretty immoral, don't you think? Should Montgomery County be funding itself on borrowed money? I don't think so! Nor should it regard the taxpayer as a limitless resource who can be shaken down for more and more and more. No, the right thing to do is to tighten the belt, and find waste and inefficiency and trim the fat out of the budget.

Some of my fellow candidate declare that they have sworn to not increase taxes any more than the amount allowed by the Charter. I'll go farther... I'll do my best to not increase property taxes at all, and to see if there's not some way to eliminate wasteful spending or inefficient use of resources so as to try to lower the income taxes as well.

You see, my family background, and our way of life, and the years of experience growing up and living among successful career civil servants gives me deep understanding of how to make government work, how to find where it doesn't work, and how to fix what's broken. My family background and history also teaches me that you can do a lot with next to nothing, and you don't need to borrow money to dress pretentiously and show off your wealth in prideful displays of ostentation. I'm not Amish, but in my attitudes, I'm not far from it.

I don't need to point out that when you see some Amish farmer my age, you may think you see some simple farmer, some rube, some hick with weird ways and strange beliefs. But you are almost certainly actually looking at someone with a deep and abiding love of nature and the land, with a shrewd business sense, lots of land that he owns free and clear, and enough wisdom to thank his maker for all of his blessings, and an understanding that being a Plain Person has every bit much of dignity and worth as can be possessed by any of those who flaunt all of their "stuff" and actually are owned by their bank.

I'm not taking money from developers, I am not taking money from any special interests.

I'm running for County Council because government is what my family does... aside from returning mostly whole from battles where quite frankly we kick much butt. Google the name of Hardman sometime... the military is a tradition to this very day.

I understand frugality. I understand hunger. I understand that the way you keep food in the larder is not spending your income on frivolous things. If elected, I will bring my familial culture of honesty, diligence, savings, persistence to the job, along with a morality that demands that you give people what they've paid for, and deliver a product where the price is right.