The Deacon's Bench
Visiting Maryland for a few days, I stumbled on this unusual story in a local paper:
When her daughter was discharged from the Navy at the end of 2010 and returned home after serving 2½ years, Darline Bell-Zuccarelli discovered that the young veteran could not afford her own place to live, and she was determined to do something about it.
So, Bell-Zuccarelli built a small home for her daughter — in her own backyard.
“My daughter was a little depressed because she was having a hard time finding a job in the first place, and then when she found the job, and then taxes and everything, she realized she could not afford to live on her own,” she said.
From June 2012 to June 2013, Bell-Zuccarelli and her husband, Gilmar Hernandez, spent nights and weekends working on the 192-square-foot house situated behind the couple’s home on Woodland Road in Gaithersburg.
Complete with a living room, kitchenette, sleeping loft, bathroom, vaulted ceiling, skylight and porch, the home is small but functional, Bell-Zuccarelli said. It also has electricity, air conditioning and heat, and it is set up for plumbing.
Bell-Zuccarelli estimated that the entire project, from lumber to furniture, cost $15,000. She and her husband, a landscaper, paid for the project by working on a “pay as you go” plan, meaning that they completed tasks as money became available to them from paychecks.
She has electrical and building permits for a shed of up to 216 square feet under city code. The house also passed foundation, framing and electrical inspections, Bell-Zuccarelli said.
No one has been able to live in the house yet because there is no running water, Bell-Zuccarelli said. Once she can afford the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission charge to connect the house’s plumbing pipes to those located on the street, which is expected to cost around $10,000, Bell-Zuccarelli can apply for an occupancy permit to have her daughter, Adrienne Baker, officially live in the structure.
Aside from giving her own daughter a place to live, Bell-Zuccarelli believes the little house could serve as a prototype to bring in people off the streets. Her idea is for Montgomery County to buy a parcel, and build small, inexpensive houses on the property to serve the homeless population.
“Build 10 of these and people won’t have to go on vouchers, people won’t have to go on welfare,” she said. “People will have somewhere to live other than the streets.”
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