CARMEL – For most, visiting a friend’s house for the first time or delivering a package requires only the simple task of typing an address into a maps app and pressing start. Except, in Carmel-by-the-Sea the task isn’t so simple.
You can try, but the city doesn’t have street addresses.
For more than a century, the small coastal town has gotten by with using unique house names or directional addresses to identify locations. Yet the tradition may not survive the test of time – or Amazon – much longer. To keep up with shifting community needs, the city is starting to explore the possibility of adding street addresses. The push came from the Carmel City Council last week, which directed staff at its Oct. 4 meeting to research the idea further and come back to council with more information at a later date.
Though introducing some means of GPS recognition for Carmel-by-the-Sea residents, renters and business owners are on the City Council’s list of priority projects for the 2022-23 fiscal year, the concept is decades-old – as is the city’s reasoning for abstaining from the practice.
The reluctance is wrapped up in ideals of city character. According to an agenda report for last week’s council meeting, “tradition and preservation of the city’s charm, unique look, and culture have been at the forefront of its governing body and residents’ preference in the past to reject implementing a street addressing system.”
In 1929, for example, the city passed a zoning law that stated “business development should forever be subordinate to the residential character of the community.” That notion of championing the city’s personality over development has long been the impetus for Carmel keeping residential streets free of sidewalks, street lights, neon signs, mailboxes and addresses, initial staff research from last week’s agenda notes.
Of course, the tradition hasn’t stopped people from trying. In 1926, City trustees passed an ordinance for house numbering of Carmel-by-the-Sea properties. The ordinance made it unlawful for the owner of any real property in the City to “maintain any house, building, or structure…without posting securely…visible to passerby…a number plate showing in legible figures the number of said premises,” according to staff research. The ordinance was passed by a unanimous vote but the city did not implement or enforce the posting of house numbers. Without any enforcement, the measure was eventually repealed in 1940.
Years later, in 1953, the city even threatened to secede from California when the state considered making it mandatory to have house numbers.
Modern qualms with lacking a street address, however, have brought the issue back on the table. And this time, with better reception.
Concerns voiced by community members vary from struggling to provide proof of residence to watching paramedics and fire trucks respond to the wrong house. Without the often expectation of having a street address, residents have expressed difficulties in opening or maintaining financial accounts, securing loans, activating or changing basic utilities like wireless internet, having packages delivered to the correct house or being “findable” in an emergency as a matter of public safety.
Workarounds to the problem, such as asking neighbors to be on the lookout for each other’s packages or offering descriptions akin to “it’s the third house on the left,” have helped patch some confusion. But community members turned out at last week’s council meeting to explain that complications are common and increasingly frustrating.
“We need to move forward into the 21st century with having our actual addresses,” one speaker argued.
Council members echoed points made in public comment, expressing their own troubles with the system, and ultimately directed staff to pursue a change in course.
Meanwhile, there is one tradition the city will be hard-pressed to let go even with the addition of street addresses – daily trips to the town post office. Staff has assured that topics of implementing street addresses and at-home paper mail delivery are two separate issues, with their intention exclusively going toward pursuing the former.
Staff maintains that the city’s post office has a long local history as being a place where residents regularly visit to not only check their PO boxes but also make idle conversation. Determined to keep the social hub up and running, staff priorities while researching a street address program include protecting Carmel’s post office and refusing to implement at-home mail delivery service. With these goals in mind, staff is in communication with Carmel’s Postmaster to see whether establishing street addresses would compel the United States Postal Service to require mail delivery, regardless of city interests, explained Carmel administrative analyst Emily Gray.
Once staff have a better understanding of what a street address program entails and would look like, they will return to advise the City Council on next steps, Gray said, adding that staff will likely not come back with more details until a new council is seated after the November election.
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