Many of you know of the issues surrounding daycare in Lansdowne lately. After extensive research, I’ve found an alternative, and felt obliged to share it with all of you that have children and need daycare. Watch the video below.

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

We’ll certainly miss our current provider, and it’s a tough choice, but we felt it’s the best thing for our child. If enough folks follow suit, hopefully the extreme noise, traffic and general domestic disturbances caused by (gasp!) children in the Resort Community of Lansdowne will finally begin to subside.

A few of us knew about the possibility of this coming out, and I thank God it did.

Tammi over Living in LoCo has the story on the Developers in Lansdowne coming out and saying that they did indeed approve home-based businesses on a case by case basis. Somehow, this little fact had been lost by the current board, so Hobie Mitchell suggested:

“CMC Management should have record of this because it was a board decision and it was not based on a single board member’s approval. If CMC is stating that they do not have a record of this - we should request a full AUDIT of their files.”

Another interesting clip of the general history of this matter:

When daycare providers, their spouses and supporters canvassed the neighborhoods for one week between December 2006 and January 2007 with a petition for in-home day care services in Lansdowne, they got 167 signatures of support.

On the flip side, 10 residents composed a letter opposing home daycare, with point-by-point arguments about how daycare will lower property values and that the business could eventually run amok with “no limits to the number of daycare sites in this community.”

Mitchell has been absent from board meetings since January, and only found out about the issue from a resident after all of this started getting heated. Eric Florence, the HOA president, on the other hand, is adamantly standing by his statements: “If Hobie has proof, it should be in our minutes. If anyone said something that is not there, it is irrelevant.”

This of course misses the point. It’s not just about people “saying something,” but rather about actual approvals of home-based businesses by the board. Mr. Mitchell is not the only person who is aware of the existence of these approvals. Evidences for these approvals were presented to the board by the daycare providers in the May meeting and it was ignored. Thankfully, though, Mr. Mitchell is acknowledging what EVERYONE else knows: home-based businesses in general, and daycare providers in particular were indeed approved well prior to this issue, according to Mr. Florence, apparently dropping out of nowhere in early 2007.

The Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce, came out today with a press release expressing to the Lansdowne HOA how bad of an idea it was to disallow home-based businesses in their community.

Tony Howard, the President of the Chamber, described the move by the HOA as “draconian.”

This action by the Lansdowne Homeowners Association will rob 40 local entrepreneurs of their livelihood while…countless other Lansdowne residents will suffer the loss of convenient child care and other important services they received from their friends and neighbors,” Howard said.

This is a result of a rather predictable move by the residents opposed to daycares coming out and saying (the following is an “editorialization,” as Tammi would call it):

“No, we’re not racist, elitist snobs who don’t love kids…some of us even have kids; it’s a home-based business issue, not a daycare issue. Besides, our hands are tied. It’s in the Covenants {spiritual Tibetan style chanting here}, and since we can’t ‘formulate the language necessary to put it to the vote in the community’ we had to search for a compromise by officially outlawing ALL home-based businesses–especially “biggies” like daycares. But it’s not about daycares…really.”

Good move, guys…Actually, the Lansdowne HOA came out with this on their website, which details exactly the difference between home-offices and home-based businesses. It seems their language skills have all of a sudden improved.

Speaking of Tammi, here’s the latest on Living (Libido?) in Loco.

There was an article in Leesburg Today a couple of weeks ago about the possible closing of home-based daycares in community of Lansdowne on the Potomac. It turns out that in a community of more than 2000 houses, 10 residents expressed their concern to the 3 members of the Board of Directors. These 10 residents evidently felt that home-based daycares were causing some sort of strain on the community.

Here were their main points:

“If you do not have children today in one of these daycare sites or do not plan on having children in the future who will use one of these daycare providers there is absolutely no benefit to you to allow [daycares in Lansdowne]…

So…if you DO have children or plan on having children in a daycare, or manage to pay your bills based on income from a daycare you should obviously just bend over, take it, and stop your whining.

“There are at least 11 daycare sites already in operation that we know about. There may be others {cue dramatic music here}. As all of us who purchased homes in Lansdowne know there are covenants that we signed, documents agreeing to abide by. These daycare facilities are in violation of these covenants.

There are actually 7 home-based daycare providers that are officially licensed through the state and the county. These home-based daycares are not in violation of the aforementioned covenants, as every law in the land–federal, state, and county–consider home-based daycares as residential use.

“If we do not stop this, there is no limit to the number of daycare sites {dramatic music again} in the community. The HOA lawyer has stated this to the Covenants Committee. This could mean these types of businesses could grow and no controls on that growth can be established. Setting this precedent could also open the door for other types of businesses. Do you want to live next to a home that is used day in and day out as day care?

• Do you want up to 9 children running around in the yard next to you from 7am to 7pm?
• Do you want parents dropping and picking up children next to you up to 18 times per day, day in and day out? Traffic is already increased at these current locations.
• Do you think someone would buy your home knowing that this is going on and note that you may have to disclose this in any real estate transaction?

Apparently, it’s not about what has happened or what is happening, it’s about what COULD happen. So now that we know that there is no real evidence of disturbances or inconveniences resulting from daycares, then it is obviously necessary to project some nightmare scenario where 9 (gasp) children are running around in a yard…all day.

This group and the “board” that has done its bidding has shown no evidence of any substantially increased traffic, or any accounts showing that a daycare center has negatively impacted the neighborhood. Meanwhile, next-door neighbors of these daycare centers have expressed confusion as to why this HOA would consider prohibition of daycares.

What if a family decided to have 9 kids of their own (it is possible)? Would the HOA decide that these 9 kids running around in a yard is a blight on the precious home values of their neighbors. Or would it make more sense to assume that a community that apparently prides itself as being family-friendly might find value in having daycares in some of its homes.

But these benefits only apply to people with children. And their needs and positions on this issue seem to be lost in all of this.

Everyone buying a home in Lansdowne paid a lot of hard earned money for their home. We need to protect the investment that each of us made and we need to ensure that the governing body of Lansdowne, the Board of Directors, understands that their duty is to protect this community from any activities that will degrade our property values…

Everyone buying a home in Lansdowne who ran a daycare before got the home with the understanding that they would be able to operate it. My daycare provider (yes I have a dog in this fight) actually INTERVIEWED A PROSPECTIVE MOTHER in the Brookfield model home. These daycare providers received loan approvals based on income from these daycares.

And there is absolutely no evidence that a home-based daycare in and of itself negatively impacts property values around it. Obviously one with unruly, unsupervised children, or badly managed facilities definitely could. If these poorly run daycares exist, then the issues they cause should be brought up to the Board. In the meantime, telling hardworking families that they can’t continue to live in your neighborhood, because too many of them might affect property values is disturbing.

The truth is, most of us are experiencing a dip in housing values, and are all concerned about protecting our investments, however an HOA’s job is not to police every little thing that MIGHT effect house values, especially those things that occur inside someone’s home.
Unfortunately, these residents are going to actually have to file real complaints with real evidence that a particular daycare is negatively affecting its neighbors, instead of lazily trying to prevent the POSSIBILITY of a daycare having said effect.

Please comment below and forward to all you know. Apparently there’s a follow-up article coming out in Leesburg Today again this week, and I will update with news on this site.

Update: Tammi over at Living in Loco has a published an article on the issue.

Update: The Loudoun Times has an article out on this now. It highlights Oksana, who is confused how easy it is going to be for Russian parents to find another Russian speaker to watch their children.

Please read the article, but I will highlight Mr. Lair’s comments.

“It’s not that I’m against home businesses or day care,” he said. “I’m against covenants violations.”

Now I’m sure Mr. Lair is a wonderful person, but the covenants of which he speaks do allow for a home-based business. (By the way, does anyone know if this is the same Jim Lair that runs the DC office of a software company out of his home?–can’t be the same guy–but either way software companies are just way sexier than daycares. If it’s not the same Jim Lair, then sincerest apologies.)

And by the way, it’s hard to really talk “covenants” when THERE IS NO LONGER A COVENANTS COMMITTEE. The same covenants committee that moved and approved that “Daycare centers and other home businesses are to register with Covenants.” And then never met again.

The covenants do indeed allow for home-based businesses (including Mr. Lair’s–if indeed it’s the same Mr. Lair) The covenants committee and the HOA as a whole has the power to approve these daycares, but they just don’t want to.

And as we saw above, Mr. Lair DOES have a problem with daycares, and it would be more productive for him to just admit that. In case you missed it above, this was Mr. Lair’s letter to the community:

• Do you want up to 9 children running around in the yard next to you from 7am to 7pm?
• Do you want parents dropping and picking up children next to you up to 18 times per day, day in and day out? Traffic is already increased at these current locations.
• Do you think someone would buy your home knowing that this is going on and note that you may have to disclose this in any real estate transaction?

No mention of covenants here…just fear of what COULD happen with a daycare in particular.

Update: Follow up article on Leesburg Today.

Correction: It turns out I was mistaken in stating that the Covenants Committee had not met lately. Apparently they reconvened in February. Apologies.