The average monthly rent in downtown Bethesda is about 20 percent higher than it is in the rest of Montgomery County and county planners say it’s only increasing with the influx of new apartments.
To counter that trend, planners are suggesting a two-pronged approach to boosting affordable rental housing through the Bethesda Downtown Plan, the master plan that will dictate zoning and land-use policies for the area for the next three decades.
“There are a lot of jobs in Bethesda. There’s NIH, there’s Navy Medical Center, there are schools and other things like that. People who work at these places should be able to live in a downtown area,” said Leslye Howerton, planner and manager of the Bethesda Downtown Plan. “These are people who may not be able to afford a car and who would be able to live near transit or may be able to walk to work.”
At Thursday’s Planning Board work session, Howerton will recommend increasing from 12.5 percent to 15 percent the minimum amount of units in a new residential project that must meet the county’s standards for income-restricted moderately priced dwelling units (MPDUs). The requirement would be put in place in much of the downtown Bethesda area, including its areas closest to the Bethesda Metro station.
County planners also say that “absent special efforts,” the roughly 2,000 downtown Bethesda units defined as naturally affordable (meaning the rent price plus expected tenant-paid utility costs are less than 30 percent of the household’s income) will likely be redeveloped due to the fact that many are in older aging buildings on valuable real estate.
On Thursday, planners will also recommend an effort to preserve those units, many of which are along Bradley Boulevard in the area planners deemed South Bethesda. The concept would designate some of those older apartment buildings as “priority sending sites,” which would allow those property owners to sell off unused density to other developers.
With the money from selling off their unused density, those property owners would theoretically be able to renovate their existing aging buildings, staving off the possibility of redevelopment that would in all likelihood result in a new and more expensive building.
Those property owners that choose to sell off their unused density would also be required to enter into an agreement with county housing authorities to retain 30 percent of their existing units at rental prices affordable for households making 65 percent or less of the area’s median income.
“We know, through the analysis that our housing planners have done, what is out there in terms of the naturally occurring affordable housing, which isn’t technically rent-restricted,” Howerton said. “We know by looking at the plan and other plans and with the conversation kind of going on throughout the country right now that we can’t build our way out of this in terms of having enough housing for those people between 65 percent and 100 percent of the [area median income].”
Newly built apartment projects in downtown Bethesda, five which have been completed since 2012, are renting for a monthly average of $2,750—30 percent more than the 2012 downtown Bethesda average and 40 percent more than the 2012 countywide average.
According to a 2012 study by the county’s Department of Housing and Community Affairs, the average monthly rent in downtown Bethesda is $1,916, about 20 percent higher than the countywide average monthly rent.
