It looks almost like an average-size house that's been sliced in half. At 12 feet wide, the neat, new single-family home is squeezed onto the slenderest of strips of land on a Brooklyn Park street of modest, post-World War II houses.
The home joins an 18-foot-wide one built in the past year in the community that spans Anne Arundel County and Baltimore City. A similar house is planned for another of the 25-foot-wide empty lots in the area.
While building on these infill lots in mature, developed communities with established roads, sidewalks and other infrastructure is considered "smart growth," residents of Brooklyn Park say the skinny houses threaten the community's identity and decrease property values. While there's nothing neighbors can do about the homes already built - which are legal under zoning law and, local real estate agents say, examples of affordable new housing in the county - the community is fighting the construction of the third narrow home.
"What used to be somebody's yard is now turning into a building lot," said Gary O'Neil, a member of the board of governors of the Arundel Neighborhoods Association.
A 12-foot-wide house, he said, "is without a doubt the most ridiculous-looking thing we've ever seen."
The tiny infill-lot houses in Brooklyn Park seem to be isolated in Anne Arundel County, though neighboring counties approach small lots and infill lots in different ways. The 18-foot-wide house on Orchard Avenue is over the city line in Baltimore, where the minimum width for a free-standing house is 16 feet. The city has not seen a similar trend toward narrow houses, said Laurie Feinberg, division chief for comprehensive planning.
Baltimore County considers any lot less than 55 feet wide "undersized" and deals with them on a case-by-case basis. People who want to build on these lots are required to go to the planning office and get a design review, and sometimes the county will require them to put two lots together to build a house, said Arnold "Pat" Keller, director of planning and zoning.
Howard County Councilwoman Courtney Watson recently proposed legislation that would allow landowners to sell the building rights to their property to a higher-density building area, such as for apartments, in order to maintain green space in communities but still allow landowners to benefit from the value of their property.
