And So - There!

Rules and regulations are placed into law - or in the instances of municipalities, by-laws - for the purpose of ensuring that there is a level playing field, that everyone adheres to common practise, or agreed-upon strictures that have the long purpose of structuring society in a manner that brings order and security to our lives. 

Sometimes, though, municipal by-laws are simply too ridiculous in their restrictions on peoples' wishes to proceed with simple manoeuvres that help them get on with their lives.

Like the upper-middle-age couple with health problems who had a brilliant idea; to use their garage as a laundry room.  They don't own a vehicle, and if they did have one they would do as others in their very short street of small homes do; park it in their ten-metre-long driveway.  As it is, their garage is used by them as storage space.  And in their community this is a common use for these single-car garages attached to modest-sized houses.

The mistake, perhaps, was in seeking permission to use their garage in such a manner.  It's perfectly all right to jam it full of excess belongings, but woe betide the householders who contemplate placing a washer and drier in one corner of the garage.  It is simply not done.  Not done because a municipal bylaw will not permit a laundry-room conversion. 

Perfectly unaccommodating. 

This is a couple whose compromised health makes it difficult to carry laundry up and down steps to the basement of the house where their washer and drier are currently located.  As for parking their car, if they had one, in their driveway; heaven forfend.  It must go into the garage.  A zoning by-law with grey whiskers mandates one parking space per home and that parking space must be in a garage.

Evidently the brilliant planners who wrote that by-law considered the driveway not as a parking space, but as part of the front lawn.  The couple could make an application to seek a zoning amendment for a variance, but that would cost them over $7-thousand, and they've been cautioned, it's unlikely it would be granted.

The woman of the house suffers from fibromyalgia and her husband has undergone numerous surgeries resulting in chronic pain and the use of a walking cane.  To assist them in remaining independent and in their own home the couple has undertaken some alterations to their kitchen making accessibility easier for them. 

They had hoped to be able to to ease the strain on their physical resources by straining their financial resources to turn half of their garage into a laundry room requiring plumbing, heating, insulation and drywall, along with a new floor to raise the level of the 'laundry room' flush with the main floor of the house.

 

Dave MacDonald and Deb Bertrand don’t have a car and use the garage of their Fallingbrook home for storage. But their plans to install a washer and dryer in the garage have run afoul of a city bylaw that requires it to be kept for parking.Photograph by: Bruno Schlumberger , Ottawa Citizen

Bureaucracy is famously - at any level of government - resistant to change.  The municipal planning department is stonily averse to permitting such a radical, socially-abusive alteration to restrictions put in place 'for the good of the entire community'.