Montgomery County Planning Commission
195
Term
Description
General Acute Care
Hospital
An institution, whether operated for profit or not,
which maintains and operates facilities for the
diagnosis, treatment or care of two or more non-
related individuals suffering from illness, injury or
deformity and where emergency, out-patient,
surgical, obstetrical, convalescent or other medical
and nursing care is rendered for periods exceeding 24
hours.
Historical Architectural
Review Board (HARB)
A public advisory body created by state and local
laws. HARBs operate under the authority of the
State of Pennsylvania's Historic District Act, General
Assembly #167 of 1961, as amended 1963.
Household
A household includes all the people who occupy a
housing unit. A housing unit is a house, an apartment,
a mobile home, a group of rooms, or a single room
that is occupied (or if vacant, is intended for
occupancy) as separate living quarters. The
occupants may be a single family, one person living
alone, two or more families living together, or
any other group of related or unrelated people who
share living arrangements.
Housing Choice Voucher
Program (formerly Section
8)
A federal program for assisting very low-income
families, the elderly, and the disabled to afford
decent, safe, and sanitary housing in the private
market which is administered on a local level by
public housing agencies.
Independent Living
Facilities
Communities where units are restricted to households
where at least one member is at least age 55;
residents live independently without nursing care.
Industrial
As shown on the Existing Land Use Map, lands with
heavy industrial uses, such as oil refineries, chemical
plants, steel and metal fabrication facilities, and
manufacturing facilities - as well as lighter industrial
uses, warehousing and distribution centers, mini-
storage facilities, body shops, junkyards, and other
outdoor storage facilities.
Term
Description
Delaware Valley Regional
Planning Commission
(DVRPC)
A regional planning agency that has served the
Philadelphia region for more than 40 years, covering
a nine-county, two state area on key issues of
transportation, land use, environmental protection
and economic development.
Expressways
A federal highway functional classification,
expressways are the highest class and include divided
multi-lane limited-access highways like the Blue
Route (I-476).
Family
A family consists of a householder and one or more
other people living in the same household who are
related by birth, marriage, or adoption. All people in
a household who are related to the householder are
regarded as members of his or her family. A family
household may contain people not related to the
householder, but those people are not included as part
of the householder’s family in tabulations.
Floodplain
An area of land adjacent to a stream or river that
experiences flooding during periods of high
discharge. It includes the floodway, which consists
of the stream channel and adjacent areas that actively
carry flood flows downstream, and the flood fringe,
which are areas inundated by the flood, but which do
not experience a strong current.
Floodway
The channel of a watercourse and adjacent land areas
that must be reserved in order to discharge a base
flood without cumulatively increasing the water
surface elevation more than a designated height.
Delaware River Basin
Commission (DRBC)
A four-state agency, encompassing Pennsylvania,
New York, New Jersey and Delaware, that regulates
water quality and supply within the Delaware River
drainage area.
