The Issue
Despite Maryland State law recognizing and separately regulating a wide spectrum of services for people struggling with addiction, Montgomery County’s zoning code does not distinguish residential care facilities from institutional uses. Its current zoning ordinance has only one designation to describe most services that offer overnight stays: the term “Residential Care Facility.”
This lack of alignment with Maryland law matters
Montgomery County’s vague zoning code results in:
- A lack of explicit protection for “halfway houses” to be zoned by right in residential areas, as State law requires.
- Zoning mismatches in which major commercial or institutional operations locate by right in residential areas that are not designed to absorb them, without any previous zoning impact evaluation, community input, or permitting process.
- Overall legal uncertainty for both residents and service providers about what operation types and sizes should be zoned in either residential or nonresidential areas.
Our Goals
- Explicitly protect the rights of people with disabilities to live in desegregated residential neighborhoods, as stated in Maryland law.
- Effectively distinguish between residential and institutional land uses and zone them accordingly.
Proposed Amendments
- Define “halfway house” using the State’s definition (§ 1.4.2(H)), as a “clinically managed, low intensity residential treatment service for individuals with substance–related disorders who are capable of self–care but are not ready to return to independent living,” corresponding to an ASAM 3.1 Level of Care. Clarify that “halfway houses” do not include outpatient services. Add “halfway houses” to the “Residential Care Facility” definition.
- Create an institutional land use definition for higher-intensity treatment facilities (ASAM Levels of Care 3.3, 3.5 and 3.7) and zone them in nonresidential areas designed to absorb their zoning impact. Guarantee that the same rules apply to every service operator, regardless of what population is served.
- Accurately define operation size as the number of patients or residents served across adjacent, resource-sharing properties under common operation.