“ATTAINABLE” HOUSING - PUTTING THE CART BEFORE THE HORSE

By Lori Jaffe

The MoCo Planning Board has big plans for us. They want to make our rural and suburban communities more like big cities – crowded and expensive to live in. To make matters worse, the initiative puts the “cart before the horse.” Our county is just not ready for this outbreak of overdevelopment that is about to take place. Come to the July 18 session to hear more about plans to make it easier for developers to turn MoCo into a money machine. To keep informed, subscribe at Empowering People in Communities (EPIC) of MoCo.

The Attainable Housing Strategies Initiative (AHSI) started in 2021, during COVID. After a historic unanimous vote by the Planning Board, it’s now before the Planning, Housing and Parks (PHP) Committee, where they will hold their last work session on July 18th, before it goes before the full County Council for a final vote in the Fall. In the past, Montgomery County wanted to provide “affordable” housing to low-income residents. But it turned out that the cost of units that the developers wanted to build, and sell was too darn high for the intended clientele. So, now they are focusing on creating “attainable” housing. But “attainable” housing is still priced at market value. Therefore, there is still a shortage of housing that low-income and middle-income residents can afford.

The claim is that this initiative will provide housing equity. But does it increase equity if the units are too expensive? The real need is affordable housing for people with more limited incomes. The Planning Board already had opportunities through the Bethesda Master Plan to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing or to put in units for lower income people and they didn’t do it. Now, most of the county is going to be turned into a city all at once, with no priorities as would be done with a master plan. If you want to see how this initiative will affect you, check out the viewer here.

Here are a few changes that are coming:

• In almost every neighborhood in Montgomery County, duplexes and triplexes will be allowed to be built in single-family neighborhoods, “by right.”
• Large developments will be allowed in priority housing districts. For example, River Road (inside the Beltway) and Connecticut Avenue would be affected. But there are no plans to improve the transit system to accommodate this growth.
•  Large scale units, which could be developed in the corridors, could be five stories and up.
•  Developers would be allowed to follow a pattern book and construct small and medium developments “by right” so there will be no public input, and no communication in front of the planning board. It would just be a clerical task.
• Frontage requirements in some areas could be removed so the buildings would not have to face the same way! This will let developers squeeze various kinds of units onto the same lot.

The Planning Board says that they have already told us what will happen and it lists some concerns (See Appendix C). But nothing in the planning document addresses those concerns. How will this initiative impact our infrastructure?

 For example:

• How will our transit system handle the increased load of new residents that are expected to live in these attainable units? What about parking? They want to make it difficult to use a car.
•  Storm water runoff is a huge issue that the County won’t answer.
•  How will the schools be impacted?
•  What happens to Homeowners Associations (HOA) and their covenants?

 It’s up to us to push back on this initiative. Please contact the Planning, Housing and Parks (PHP) Committee. Tell them not to put the cart before the horse.

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Lori Jaffe is the Party Secretary for the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee, volunteer coordinator and Member of the Executive Board. She can be reached at [email protected]