Editor’s Note: This story was originally published at 11:37 a.m. on Feb. 5, 2025. It was updated at 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 5, 2025 to include comments from Marc Elrich.
Montgomery County Councilmembers Andrew Friedson (D-Dist.1) and Natali Fani-González (D-Dist. 6) formally introduced a legislative package Tuesday that would allow more residential building types – including duplexes, triplexes, townhomes and apartments – along the county’s transit corridors, with a requirement that 15% of the housing serve the local workforce.
The councilmembers are the lead sponsors of the More Housing N.O.W. (New Options for Workers) legislative package announced Jan. 28. The aim of the legislative package is to increase access to more affordable workforce housing through two zoning text amendments, a subdivision regulation amendment and one bill that would change how developers of specific affordable housing projects are taxed.
According to the sponsors, the legislation is inspired by public conversations concerning the Attainable Housing Strategies Initiative proposed by the county Planning Board in 2024, but it was not based on that proposal. The Attainable Housing Strategies Initiative outlines recommendations to the council for zoning changes in some single-family home zones in targeted areas of the county.
“Combating the housing crisis was never exclusively about attainable housing recommendations. It requires a comprehensive approach,” Friedson said during Tuesday’s council meeting in Rockville.
Friedson and Fani-González said the goal of the legislative package is to “increase pathways to homeownership for hard-working residents of our county.” The legislative package is co-sponsored by council President Kate Stewart (D-Dist. 4) and councilmembers Laurie-Anne Sayles (D-At-large), Marilyn Balcombe (D-Dist. 2) and Dawn Luedtke (D-Dist. 7).
“After many months of receiving feedback from community members and housing experts [on the attainable housing strategies proposal], we took a step back to consider how we could build consensus to make the most meaningful progress moving forward,” Friedson said. “So after taking in all of the feedback and consulting with a wide variety of housing experts and community stakeholders, we rolled up our sleeves and forged a consensus on a path forward to make significant progress with a thoughtful and targeted approach.”
The attainable housing strategies proposal sparked heated debate among public officials and community members last year with hundreds of community members attended the council’s series of listening sessions on the proposed changes in September and October. Critics of the proposal cited concerns ranging from the potential destruction of neighborhood character to the belief that the suggested housing types would not be considered affordable for many potential homeowners. Proponents of the strategy argued it would provide an effective way to increase homeownership opportunities for the middle class.
Council Vice President Will Jawando (D-At-large) and councilmember Kristin Mink (D-Dist. 5) released statements in early January encouraging the council to “press pause” on moving forward with the Planning Board’s recommendations.
County Executive Marc Elrich (D) criticized the proposed legislation in a press briefing Wednesday. He was critical of the legislation’s goals of increasing housing options for middle-income county residents as opposed to low-income county residents.
“We have over 50,000 households with incomes around $50,000 or less … this proposal doesn’t address that at all,” Elrich said. “The biggest challenge in the county is affordable housing for low income people, and that’s is the thing we really should be addressing.”
Elrich argued that market rate housing is already being built in the county without the legislation.
“The idea that we would subsidize what’s being built all the time is just flat out ludicrous. But also the idea that this is something special that solves a problem when this is the housing that’s actually being built, that’s that’s a bit of a logical problem,” Elrich said.
What is More Housing N.O.W.?
The More Housing N.O.W. legislative package includes two zoning text amendments, a subdivision regulation amendment and one bill. Each will be subject to public hearings and will be voted on separately by the council.
The first zoning text amendment, or ZTA, would allow duplexes, triplexes, townhouses and apartment buildings in certain residential zones if they are located along boulevards, downtown boulevards, downtown streets, town center boulevards or controlled major highways. Fifteen percent of the units must qualify as “workforce housing.” According to the legislative staff report, that would mean income-restricted units for residents making between 70% and 120% of area median income, which is defined as the midpoint of a specific area’s income distribution. Friedson said that would be equivalent to an annual salary of approximately $148,000, or two working people making around $75,000 each.
Fani-González said Tuesday the ZTA was designed to be “intentional” about building more housing near transit.
“Think about places where we want to see more growth, places where we can have young families move in, places where you can have firefighters, teachers move in,” Fani-González said.
While the legislative package is not the same as the attainable housing strategies initiative, it shares a similar goal of increasing access to so-called “missing middle housing.”
The county has also seen a decline in its population of middle-income earners and increases in its low- and high-income populations, indicating a lack of suitable housing options that are affordable or attainable, according to Planning Director Jason Sartori.
According to Montgomery Planning data, the county lost more than 26,000 middle-income residents from 2005 to 2022, while gaining nearly 88,000 low-income residents and 67,000 high-income residents in the same timeframe.
“Historically, this just hasn’t been our focus. We focused on market-rate and we focused on affordable and deeply affordable housing, and it is this middle part of the donut hole that unfortunately has been hollowed out in our community,” Friedson said.
Another proposed zoning amendment would create an expedited process for developers to convert certain commercial properties into residential properties. If passed, the ZTA would allow “Commercial to Residential Reconstruction use” in the county zoning code, which would apply to any building that is converted or demolished from a 50% vacant commercial building to a residential building, according to the legislative staff report.
This proposal intends to make it easier for developers to repurpose vacant or mostly vacant office buildings and other commercial properties into housing.
“This is us trying to move forward on making sure that we don’t have empty buildings in our community,” Friedson said. “This [ZTA] is very specific to ensure that we were moving approvals very quickly.”
A third, logistical piece of legislation proposes a subdivision regulation amendment to make the commercial conversion ZTA possible. It would create a specific subdivision-related administrative process for expediting approval of commercial-to residential conversions under the county’s regulatory code, making sure the county has the processes in place to approve these redevelopments.
A fourth bill would allow the county to offer a “payment in lieu of taxes” for any residential development approved under the proposed conversion ZTA that fulfilled the requirement of 15% or more workforce housing. This means that qualifying developments would be exempt from 100% of the real property tax that would otherwise be levied for a period of 25 years. The intent is to encourage developers to convert to affordable units.
The Greater Capital Area Association of REALTORS (GCAAR) released a statement Tuesday in support of the legislative package, but also encouraged the council to do more to address housing supply issues in the county.
“The policies put forward in this housing proposal are not new or experimental. These policy solutions are existing tools that must be activated to combat the housing supply and affordability crisis in Montgomery County,” the statement said. “These solutions alone will not move the needle; further action needs to be taken moving forward.”
Public hearings on the legislative package are scheduled for 1:30 and 7 p.m. March 11.