Sandy Spring Residents Fight To Save Homes

SANDY SPRING, Md. (WUSA) -- They feel neglected and disenfranchised, and that's why some Sandy Spring residents used this Martin Luther King Holiday to try and save their homes.

The property just off Brooke Road near the Sandy Spring Slave Museum is at the center of a huge zoning dispute. Some property owners there have used a gravel road next to the museum to access their land for more than a hundred years. But now a chain blocks off Farm Road.

It's a dispute pitting neighbor against neighbor.

"I have to pay full property taxes on land I can't use," Robert Awkard says.

To make matters worse Montgomery County officials say Farm Road doesn't exist.

"They've erased the Farm Road that residents use to access their property," Adrienne Gude Lewis says. "I believe the plan is for a developer to come in and build there and make a lot of money."

So today, as the nation remembers Martin Luther King's fight for equality and justice for all, more than a dozen of the Sandy Spring property owners and their supporters set out to seek justice of their own.

First stop, Maryland Attorney General's Doug Gansler's Bethesda home. Protesters pulled a flatbed truck right up to the front where he couldn't miss a huge sign which read, "Since you won't let us live on our properties, we thought perhaps we could live on yours."

Gansler told the group it wasn't his jurisdiction to try and settle the dispute, and promised tohelp set up meetings with those who could help.

They've already enlisted the help of fraud investigator Steve Kanstoroom. He's found Farm Road exits in titles, on a state property map, and other planning department documents.

"It's in their own book. And they've doled out addresses on the road as recently as 2002," Kanstoroom said.

The group also planned to visit several county officials they hold responsible, like Tom Perez of the Department of Labor and Licensing Regulations, Park and Planning Director Royce Hansen, Director of Development and Review Rose Krasnow, and Montgomery County Councilman George Leventhal.

"We've seen this happen in other black communities and people stepped in to help," Gude-Lewis said.

"No one's stepping in to help Sandy Spring."