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From Stately Beginnings, a Not-So-Eloquent Turn as Residents Protest Using House for Homeless

Montgomery County bought this house off Bradley Boulevard in Bethesda last fall, intending to convert the surrounding land to a park. (By Susan Biddle -- The Washington Post)
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(As for Piotrow, she's happily living in New Hampshire and wants to stay far from the neighborhood fray.)

Dzurek is right about the process. It's been cumbersome and confused. If you saw the stack of documents and studies produced by at least four county agencies about this one house, you'd begin to understand why taxes are so high.

But this dispute is not just about process. It is, indeed, about the prospect of a homeless family coming into a pretty neighborhood of top-dollar houses.

Leventhal's view stems in part from his experience in 1969, when his was the first Jewish family to move into Glen Echo Heights, where covenants had prohibited sales to people of the "Hebrew" or "colored" persuasion.

In Hillmead, he says, "we will find stable housing for a needy family, and the neighborhood will adjust." The alternative is to tell people in Silver Spring, Wheaton or Gaithersburg "that they have to absorb all of our low-income and formerly homeless population because the residents just aren't 'up to par' for Bethesda."

E-mail:marcfisher@washpost.com

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