Council Rejects House for Homeless

Montgomery to Use Site in Park Plans

The Montgomery County Council rejected a proposal yesterday to use a sprawling Bethesda house to shelter a homeless family as a slim majority turned aside impassioned arguments that the affluent county needs to do more to welcome needy residents in prosperous neighborhoods.

After a bitter debate in which insults were traded and motives were questioned, council members voted 5 to 4 to open the way for the county's park and planning agency to tear down the house in the Hillmead neighborhood and use the land to expand a neighborhood park.

The leading opponent, council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda), said the county did not do enough to notify neighbors that the house might be used for the homeless, but instead left them with the impression that the property would become part of a park. He and other opponents denied accusations that they were uninterested in helping the poor.

The debate over the fate of the 1930s-era house, which has raged for months on neighborhood e-mail discussion groups and in a flood of letters to county officials, has grown to symbolize tensions over how the county should expand its dwindling stock of affordable housing as the economic gap between Montgomery's haves and have-nots has widened.

Council member George L. Leventhal (D-At Large), who grew up in Bethesda and lives in Takoma Park, led the fight to use the house for homeless residents. He cast the dispute as a "moral issue" that allows the county's wealthy to do little other than write checks or participate in fundraising walks to help the homeless. The vote yesterday could push more low-income residents into neighborhoods such as Silver Spring and Germantown and relieve others of responsibility to help the less fortunate, he said.

Leventhal repeatedly questioned the liberal bona fides of the nine-member council, and the county itself, for years dominated by progressive Democrats.

"I would never support anything that I believed placed my constituents' safety and security at risk," he said, adding that politicians "mustn't create a process that gives veto power to neighbors over who gets to move into the neighborhood. That would be blatantly discriminatory and violate the principle of open housing."

His views were echoed by council member Valerie Ervin (D-Silver Spring), the only African American on the council. "Segregated housing," she said, citing a recent study, "often defines what schools you will go to, what employers you will have access to."

Those views were countered by Berliner, who represents the county's most affluent residents in Chevy Chase, Bethesda and Potomac. Berliner, a lawyer, said the debate is more about due process for Hillmead, a community that he said has been maligned during the debate. He also noted a nearby large shelter in the Hillmead neighborhood.

"This is not one of the great moral issues of our time; it is not a singular moment that will define our commitment to civil rights or our social welfare," he said.

"I resent the suggestion that all the opponents are small minded and rich," Berliner said. "The world is not always black and white, moral crusaders versus selfish louts. I am as confident in the rightness of my [position] as my colleague is in the righteousness of his."

Council member Marc Elrich (D-At Large) said he concluded that the property could not effectively be used simultaneously as housing and a park addition. He called arguments by supporters of the housing plan "banal."