Rats, cats, PODS and sheds were a few of the items discussed at Mount Vernon Citizens’ Advisory Committee meeting last week.
Presentations were made by Rebecca Goodyear, Fairfax County Department of Planning and Zoning, and John Yetman, Fairfax County Environmental Health Department. Questions from the group came fast and furious as they tried to determine if their neighbors were in violation of a zoning code when they made a curb cut without a permit or built a tree house too close to the road.
A matter of great interest to the group was the subject of overcrowding in houses.
“A big thing we’re dealing with now is too many people in one house,” said Goodyear and explained that her department is responsible for determining if occupants are related.
Code dictates that one can have as many people in the house as are related by blood or marriage plus two other people.
“Most people will say to us that they’re mother, brother and their brother’s cousin. We have to walk away if they say they’re related. We can’t do anything about it,” Goodyear said.
Yetman said that his department gets involved in reviewing whether the residences have the appropriate square footage.
“Zoning deals with who you are and how you are related. We deal with square footage,” he said.
Health and Safety requires that each person has 50 square feet of sleeping space. Bathrooms, hallways and utility rooms do not qualify. However, you can use a dining room as a living space if you put up partitions because privacy is also a requirement. You must also have two exits from a room.
Several people complained of instances where it appeared that too many people were living in one house. Yetman said that he knew of a house that had 15 workers living in the house. The company that had rented the house for the workers and most likely told them not to answer the door if the county came and if they did answer to say they were related.
OTHER ISSUES were addressed at the meeting. When asked about the Portable On Demand Storage facilities that seem to be popping up everywhere, Goodyear said that they were treated as accessory storage structures, of which no more than 36,000 square feet were allowed — in the back yard. Since most of the PODS are deposited in the front yard, most people would be in violation, but since they are usually only there for a week or two they are usually removed before they are cited. Owners who leave containers in their front yard for longer are given 30 days to remove them.
“If they don’t comply, they are in violation,” Goodyear said. “They [Board of Supervisors] are looking into amending the ordinance since this is a new industry.”
She said that dumpsters are OK in front of the house as long as the owner has an active building permit.
Childcare is something that people frequently call to complain about. Goodyear said that the number of children a provider can have in a non-attached home is seven; five in an attached home. However, it becomes confusing because the Commonwealth of Virginia says that a provider can have 12. In this case, however, the county does supersede the Commonwealth.
GOODYEAR SAID THAT they get a lot of chicken complaints. A homeowner needs to have two acres of land to raise chickens; however if the chickens are less than six months old, it doesn’t matter how many they have. The problem is that it’s hard to tell how old a chicken is.
While there is a limit on the number of dogs (based on square footage of land) that one can have, there is no limit on number of cats. Yetman was involved in the case of Ruth Knueven, the woman in Mount Vernon who had hundreds of cats in her house. The house was declared uninhabitable and the occupants had to move. Yetman said that the house is now for sale and will be gutted.
Cat hoarding is only one example of hoarding. Yetman showed photos of a townhouse where things had accumulated so much that the owners had not been able to reach the kitchen in 12 years and could not get up and down the stairs because junk was piled up to the ceiling.
“The house was in really bad shape,” Yetman said. “You know it when you see it. One of our challenges is getting access.”
In this case, they learned about it when the front door blew open and a neighbor happened to look inside. They worried about the occupants and made a call. The Health Department immediately declared it uninhabitable and the owners had to move out. Not only was it a health hazard, but there was so much junk in the house that the floor was starting to collapse and they were concerned that if the floor fell, it would blow out the basement walls of the adjoining townhouses.
GOODYEAR ADDRESSED the issue of parked cars at houses. She said that one can’t park a vehicle on the grass for more than 48 hours, but if the car is moved everyday that it is OK. Five or more cars on one lot meet the definition of a junkyard and can be dealt with by zoning. The Fairfax County police deal with four or less cars; they also deal with cars that aren’t tagged. However, since there is only one officer in the whole county who takes care of that area, it doesn’t always get top priority.
Yetman explained that the seven people in his department have to deal with a huge spectrum, including hotels, summer camps, private schools, child care centers, public swimming pools, tattoo parlors, adult care, half-way houses, massage therapy, smoking and trash and garbage.
“We take complaints from tenants, landlords, third parties, neighbors and drive-bys,” he said. And unlike the zoning department which does not take anonymous complaints, calls to Yetman’s department can be anonymous.
Lead is another issue that Yetman deals with. He still sees several instances where lead is too high, mostly when people immigrate here from foreign countries bringing with them pottery and other items made with lead. One child from Taiwan was found to have lead poisoning; it was traced back the herbal medication his parents were giving him — it contained 25 percent lead.
Regarding the problem with rats, Yetman said that people need to eliminate their food sources — garbage, dog feces and other items — and they will go away. Mildred Corbett spoke about the squirrels who did major damage to her car, complaining that the county hadn’t done anything about it. Yetman said that wasn’t in the county’s domain, and that the only solution in that case was to call in trapper or somebody from a pest control company.
The next CAC meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 11, 7:30 p.m., at the Mount Vernon Government Center 2511 Parkers Lane.