Day after day for weeks on end, Whitney Dudley rose before dawn, leashed her two dogs, walked to Burkshire Road and recorded the same thing: red Nissan, white Toyota, gold Saturn, black Nissan.
Dudley and her husband, Brad, live east of Towson University, a school with 16,000 students but on-campus housing for fewer than 4,000, and she and her neighbors have been fighting for years to stop landlords from renting houses to more people than the law allows.
FOR THE RECORD - An article in Monday's Maryland section about disputes between landlords and neighbors in Baltimore County incorrectly stated the ownership interest two tenants hold in a property at 63 Burkshire Road, Towson. Initially, the tenants were given 1 percent stakes in the limited liability company that owns the property. Later, they relinquished those stakes to the company and were given 1 percent stakes in the house itself.
The Sun regrets the errors.
County zoning regulations say that no more than two unrelated renters can live in a building in a single-family zone. But Dudley says those laws are routinely ignored. So, she compiles logs showing who parks where and when, an inefficient process, but the only way for the neighborhood to prove its case.
Activists throughout the county believe that when landlords and tenants violate zoning regulations they create traffic, parking, trash and noise problems that lower property values and destabilize neighborhoods.
The county, however, has been unable to halt the cycle. For years, officials have been fielding complaints about occupancy violations and property owners who divide large, single-family homes into more apartments than zoning allows, an issue of growing concern in the southwestern part of the county and one that is being studied by the Planning Department. County Council members say they plan to introduce legislation in the next few months to deal with rental problems.
The Planning Department has conducted studies in the past, and council members have passed legislation. Yet little has changed.
One reason is that the county's code enforcement efforts often are unsuccessful. Enforcement officers respond only to complaints - they don't perform regular inspections - and they can't enter a house to check on the number of apartments or tenants without permission.
As a result, Dudley and other neighborhood activists use the only tool available to them: They catalogue the makes, models and license plate numbers of cars parked outside problem homes, usually late at night or early in the morning, as a way to document apparent violations.
"It's my neighborhood. ... It's worth the effort," said Dudley.
What occurred at the house with the four cars Dudley tracked for six months - at 63 Burkshire Road - was an apparent attempt by a landlord to circumvent the zoning rules.
Students, many of whom are willing to do almost anything to maintain cheap rent, have been known to work with landlords to hide evidence of possible violations by moving beds from one house to another the day before an inspector is to arrive.
But the owner of 63 Burkshire Road, Henry J. MacLaughlin, took a more direct approach. He gave two student tenants each a 1 percent stake in the limited liability corporation that owns the property, in theory allowing two additional unrelated students to live there.
County Administrative Hearing Officer Stanley Shapiro ruled in May that the arrangement was a sham because the owners with a 1 percent stake assumed no liabilities or benefits from the house. He levied a $12,600 fine against the limited liability corporation and $600 against each of the four tenants, an unusually large penalty.
MacLaughlin appealed the decision. At a hearing last week before the Board of Appeals, his lawyer, William L. Ralston, argued that the zoning code defines the owner as the person listed in county tax records, and that the two students meet that definition.
"There is a public policy argument to be made on the behalf of the county, but this is a statutory matter," he told board members.
Even when residents get favorable judgments against landlords, Dudley said, the process is so lengthy and the penalties often are so small that dishonest landlords are undeterred.
"Landlords are willing to take the risk of a couple hundred dollars to violate again because of the thousands they can collect in rent," she said.
That's not how it works everywhere.
Mandatory registration of all rental property and periodic inspections are standard in many places, especially near colleges and universities, said Stuart Meck, a senior researcher with the American Planning Association in Chicago.
"It just doesn't work on a case-by-case basis," he said. "A complaint basis ... will just make people angry because it looks like you're singling someone out."
Montgomery and Prince George's counties require rental registration and perform regular inspections, as does Baltimore City. Some Baltimore County Council members are discussing the possibility of a bill to create such a system here, but its passage isn't a sure thing.
Council Chairman Stephen G. Samuel Moxley, a Catonsville Democrat who said he's heard many complaints about illegal conversions of large homes into apartments, especially in Arbutus, said he met with a group several years ago when the idea of rental registration was proposed, and landlords expressed concerns.
