At a listening session held at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School on Wednesday night, hundreds of area residents expressed their opposition to the Planning Board’s proposed housing strategies initiative, citing concerns with how recommendations would impact home values and local schools, the character of their neighborhoods, the environment and traffic.
During the forum, one attendee said the proposal would cause the “destruction to all single-family neighborhoods.”
The proposed housing strategies initiative aims to address a decline in its population of middle-income earners and increases in its low- and high-income populations in recent years. This decline indicates a lack of suitable housing options that are affordable or attainable, according to Montgomery County Planning Director Jason Sartori.
The initiative approved in June by the board, dubbed the Attainable Housing Strategies project, makes recommendations to the County Council for zoning changes in single-family home zones. The changes, which the council would have to approve, attempt to provide more housing options and opportunities, especially for middle-income residents, Sartori told MoCo360 before the board’s June vote. No formal legislation or timeline has been developed yet by the County Council.
This was the fifth listening session held by Sartori, County Council President Andrew Friedson and Planning Board President Artie Harris.
At the entrance of the school Wednesday night, opposition advocates handed out stickers to attendees that said, “Press pause to Montgomery County re-zoning” and “Say no!” as well as bright yellow flyers with the image of a Pinocchio on one side that read, “Raise this sign when you hear a lie from a government official.”
Liz Brenner, a Chevy Chase resident who was distributing fliers at the front entrance of the school, told MoCo360 that the attainable housing proposal was like a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Brenner explained that she didn’t trust the planning board or council, whom she said had “promised” to preserve single-family housing around Bethesda.
She added that she shares the same concerns county planners and council members have about issues with housing affordability in the county but did not see the solution coming from the planning department.
Inside the school, Rockville resident Michael Dutka, told MoCo360 that he supported the recommendations in the proposal.
“I think Montgomery County could be a little more affordable, a little more accommodating of new people,” he said. “It makes a lot of sense to build in existing communities rather than in far-flung exurbs.”
More than 580 county residents signed up to attend the listening session, according to Friedson, and seats in the B-CC’s auditorium were nearly filled when the meeting began.
While support for the recommendations was small compared to the opposition, Dutka was not the lone supporter. During the 90-minute question and comment portion of the forum, several people praised the plan and said the recommendations would be a useful tool to alleviate the housing crisis in the county.
“I know parents of MCPS grads in [my] social circle [and] their kids, while gainfully employed, cannot afford to live anywhere remotely close to where they grew up,” one attendee said. “Adding duplexes or triplexes to the housing mix, or small apartments in areas close to transit would be a useful step in dealing with the situation.”
Another supporter encouraged attendees to “zoom out and think about the unprecedented housing crisis happening in our country and our county and all of the people who are looking for housing and don’t have housing.”
However, comments and questions from those who oppose the proposal dominated the session.
Lyric Winik, a former B-CC PTSA president, spoke out against the proposal saying that it was not a solution to housing affordability in the county.
“This school right here has 27% FARM students [receiving free and reduced meals] every week, parent volunteers serve hundreds of students in a food and necessities pantry with dignity. So we’re very conscious every single day here of the need for affordable housing,” Winik said.
She also noted that the proposals “prioritize density and market priced housing” and argued that would result in “tightly packed, multi-million dollar homes that are going to squeeze out more people.”
“Quite frankly, I’m one of them,” Winik said.
Other attendees also called for the county to provide more data and analysis about how the recommendations would impact their home values and make a dent in the housing crisis.
After the forum, Friedson said that the outreach from the public before the council had a legislative proposal was unprecedented.
“Right now, all we have are the recommendations that have come from the Planning Board and [we] did that so we could hear from residents so that we could be thoughtful, and so that we could go through this process in a methodical way,” he said.
At the session, Friedson took several opportunities to dispel misinformation that he said had been going around about the process of the proposal turning from recommendations into legislation for the county.
“Nothing is actually before the council. There is no vote scheduled in October, nothing is even introduced,” he said. “That is just absolutely misinformation, mischaracterization and a scare tactic that has unfortunately made people feel like this is being rushed.”
Following the listening sessions, Friedson said that council staff would aggregate feedback that was received during the six listening sessions and an online portal that allows residents to provide feedback.
Once the feedback is aggregated, the council staff will share it with the full county council. “Then ultimately we’re going to have to decide how best to proceed,” Friedson said.
“As I mentioned tonight, there is a lot of room between doing nothing and doing all that the planning board has recommended and we’re going to have to decide how we take this up, what we take up and what gets introduced before the council,” he continued. “And that will be just the beginning of the formal legislative process.”
The sixth and last listening session will be virtual and held via Zoom from noon to 1:30 p.m. on Oct. 2.
