Hoping to pull off an 11th-hour miracle, opponents are trying to galvanize opposition to Mayor Brandon Scott’s zoning de-regulation package – specifically two bills that have already been advanced by the City Council and are up for final passage tomorrow night.

City lawmakers almost never reverse a “second reader” vote, but some riled-up residents are hoping to defy the odds.

“We can’t believe that our elected officials – knowing that this is not the best thing and not right – would go ahead and try to push it with such haste,” said Janet Allen, president of the Heritage Crossing Residents Association, a participant in a recent online strategy session with a dozen other community leaders.

Representing neighborhoods from across the city, the group has mapped out a multi-pronged battle plan.

“We have to focus on the people where we are likely to be able to sway their ‘yes’ vote to a ‘no ‘vote, and there are a couple that we’ve identified,” said one of the meeting organizers, Linda Batts, president of the Hanlon Improvement Association.

City Council Vice President Sharon Green Middleton, who opposes the zoning bills but was absent from last Monday’s vote, is being pressured to show up and use her influence to sway others to join her.

“She needs to come in and vote no,” Batts said, speaking with The Brew after the Wednesday night strategy meeting. “She needs to be in the room.”

The group is urging residents to bombard their council representative and City Council President Zeke Cohen with phone calls and emails urging them to reject the bills. They’re also making their case on social media and radio call-in shows and planning what message they will put on their signs when they show up in-person at City Hall tomorrow evening.

“Democracy, not developers” and “Stop the pain, vote no or abstain” are two Batts is considering.

Former City Council President Lawrence Bell was on WEAA on Thursday, inveighing against legislation that Mayor Scott says will make housing more affordable and grow the city by removing barriers for new apartment construction. Bell says the bills will open the door to predatory real estate interests.

“Corporations are coming into cities like Baltimore, buying up property and exploiting the property, quite frankly, in such a way that it maximizes their profit, but is at the detriment of communities,” going on to field multiple calls from residents who were also against the legislation.

“Please thank those who voted NO and ask those who voted YES to reconsider, given the far reaching negative impact of these measures,” says an email labeled “URGENT!” circulated by another critic, former Councilman Jody Landers, that includes a chart to show the vote count for the two bills last week.

• Bill 25-0064 (the “bulk and yard” measure) permits larger buildings on all residential lots, reduces or eliminates side yard requirements in all residential zones, reduces or eliminates rear yard requirements in the R-8 zone only and increases multi-family density in the R-5 throughR-8 zones.

• Bill 25-0065 (the “parking minimums” measure) eliminates off-street parking requirements for new building projects in all residential zones.

On the bulk and yard measure, voting “yes” last week were President Cohen, Mark Parker (1st), Ryan Dorsey (3rd), Paris Gray (8th), John Bullock (9th), Phylicia Porter (10th), Zac Blanchard (11th), Jermaine Jones (12th) and Odette Ramos (14th).

Voting “no” were Danielle McCray (2nd), Mark Conway (4th), Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer (5th), James Torrence (7th) and Antonio Glover (13th).

Lawmakers voted the same way on the parking minimums bill, except for Porter who joined the minority and voted “no” on that measure.

Middleton was absent for both votes.

New Category: Multi-Family Housing

With bills 0064 and 0065 under fire, opponents aren’t the only ones scrambling to influence votes – the mayor and supporters of the legislation have also kicked into gear.

Just days before last week’s meeting, word circulated that Scott was holding a telephone town hall about the zoning legislation featuring him, Maryland Secretary of Housing Jake Day and three other top city officials  – which was scheduled the same evening as the council meeting, when those two bills were up for a key vote.

(Some residents were informed of the event via a robocall. Others complained afterwards that after they phoned in and told the screener they were critical of the two bills, their calls were never put through.)

Scott has scheduled another town hall meeting tomorrow at Coppin State University at 6:30 p.m. – not long after the city council meeting starts at 5 p.m.

Opponents complain that such timing is part of a pattern of failing to give residents enough time to understand and weigh in on complicated and far-reaching legislation.

“That’s intentional,” Bell said on WEAA. “They know that once the public realizes what’s up with these bills, they will be against them.”

“Modest steps that work”

Administration officials and supporters say the city will reap long term benefits from the package, including its centerpiece, Bill 25-0066, the subject of the telephone town hall and Coppin events.

The measure would rezone the vast majority of the city’s current housing stock to allow for the construction or conversion of single-family homes into dwellings with up to four units.

The bill creates a new category of “low-density, multi-family housing” to supplement the single-family housing designation that, according to the mayor, is a legacy of Baltimore’s history of racially segregated housing.

The legislation “will make it possible to build the types of housing that exclusionary zoning has long prohibited”  – Mayor Brandon Scott.

Supporters have argued that the bill package, introduced and championed by 3rd District Councilman Ryan Dorsey, would stimulate the construction of multi-family units, which would create more affordable housing and denser, more transit-oriented neighborhoods that would reverse Baltimore’s population loss.

Debate has been intense in online forums and comments sections. Critics charge there is no evidence showing that dividing up single-family homes into multiple dwellings would lower Baltimore housing costs, while defenders offer a Pew study they say shows otherwise.

Rent stabilization and tenants’ rights provisions are not part of Dorsey’s bills but could be added later, Barbara Samuels, a longtime fair housing attorney for the ACLU wrote in defense of the measures.

“It’s not either/or; it’s all of the above,” Samuels wrote in a Brew comment, calling the bills “modest steps that have been shown to make housing easier and less expensive to produce without cutting corners with safety or quality.”

“The bills will reduce costs and remove other barriers to building ‘capital A Affordable Housing’ i.e subsidized by government to serve people most impacted by the housing crisis or shut out of the market altogether,” Samuels wrote.

The impact on affordability of market rate housing she called “a different story.”

“Upzoning and increased supply alone reduce rents, or moderate rent escalation, but only by a small percentage,” Samuels added. “Reduced costs for market rate units is mostly a benefit to younger people with middle incomes and up.”

One Homeowner Voice

City residents alarmed by the bills say Dorsey and the mayor are discounting their lived experience with problems that will be exacerbated by lowering development guardrails.

These include: predatory absentee landlords, lax code enforcement and single-family properties carved up into tiny, rented rooms, all of which could tip a neighborhood’s balance away from the stability to overcrowding, trash proliferation, parking congestion and other quality of life issues.

As a homeowner living near Lake Montebello between two rental properties, Maraizu Onyenaka says she has seen it all firsthand.

“The city is horrible with enforcement of anything, right? So if you open the gates and expect enforcement to close the gate, you’re sadly mistaken,” said Onyenaka, who moved into the northwest community 19 years ago and is now president of CHM, which represents the Coldstream, Homestead and Montebello neighborhoods.

A 48-year-old project manager who works on IT projects in healthcare, Onyenaka said she has repeatedly tried to persuade her council representative not to support them. (Councilwoman Odette Ramos explains her general support of the bill package, except for 25-0066, here.)

Blocking Sun, Bringing Instability

Onyenaka has been consulting with zoning advocate Joan Floyd to confirm precisely how the bulk and yard measure would affect her block, which has deep lots and is zoned R-6.

The bill would allow “by right” – meaning without review or approval by the Baltimore City Board of Municipal and Zoning Appeals (BMZA) – the following, according to Floyd:

• Each owner could construct up to three units on their lot.

• Each owner could build extensions stretching far past the back of their current home as long as they leave a 25-foot rear yard.

• Each owner could use the full width of the lot for construction of a building up to 35 feet in height.

(Other rowhouse neighborhoods would witness an even more dramatic impact under the bill, with buildings permitted “by right” to expand right up to the rear alley property line.)

For Onyenaka, the zoning change would mean that her backyard, where she enjoys bright-colored begonias and hydrangeas and nurtures asparagus, blueberry bushes and a productive grape vine, could be cast into shadows.

“Them going back 20 yards would totally block my sun,” Onyenaka said this week, talking to The Brew about the many reasons she thinks the city should scrap the bills and address the housing affordability issue in a more targeted way.

“We need that connection with nature. It is part of how we can manage our stress. It’s part of our human experience,” she said.

“When you take these bills together, what you really have is Blockbusting 2025”  – Maraizu Onyenaka, CHM president.

Onyenaka said the legislation has a laudable goal of increasing housing affordability in the city, but in CHM it’s going to undermine long-term efforts to increase home ownership and neighborhood quality of life.

“Applied to my community, we’re going to have 15-16 people could be jammed into one property – tell me they’re not going to come with cars?” she said. “When you take these bills together, what you really have is Blockbusting 2025.”

To those who would call her a NIMBY, Onyenaka has a furious reply: “You know, I actually committed to this community and to this city and have been paying taxes here for longer than you probably have been.”

“These communities were kind of designed for people to be able to grow into – to have children, to have a little yard space, a little elbow room,” she said, suggesting that the legislation may make more sense “for those small, small, small houses” in places like Fells Point or Canton.

With slim chances of derailing the two bills up for final passage Monday, she said, her community has asked recently for a legislative tweak to exempt them.

“Don’t undo what we’ve been working on here for 20 years,” she said. “One solution does not fit all.”