Dozens of supporters and opponents packed a Montgomery County Council public hearing in Rockville on Tuesday to offer their opinions on a package of proposed legislation and zoning text amendments that aim to increase workforce housing along local transit corridors.
Over the course of nearly four hours, many of the 70 people who had registered to speak alternately praised and criticized the proposals as councilmembers listened. More than 50 additional speakers were slated to speak at a second hearing scheduled for 7 p.m. on Tuesday evening.
The More Housing N.O.W. (New Options for Workers) legislative package aims to 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 goal of the legislative package is to increase access to more affordable workforce housing through two zoning text amendments (ZTAs), a subdivision regulation amendment and one bill that would change how developers of specific affordable housing projects are taxed. One of the ZTAs would make it easier for developers to repurpose vacant or mostly vacant office buildings and other commercial properties into housing.
Supporters who spoke at the hearing in general praised the legislative package’s aim to increase the county’s housing supply and create realistic homeownership opportunities for more county residents.
“It’s a plain and simple fact that our county needs more housing,” said Carrie Kisicki, Montgomery advocacy manager for the Coalition for Smarter Growth, a Washington, D.C. metro region nonprofit focused on housing affordability and transit access. “People want housing that they can afford, and they do not want to have to spend their lives sitting in traffic just to get to work.”
But critics said they are concerned that more development would encroach on existing neighborhoods without producing housing that is actually affordable for county residents.
“It remains unclear whether the proposal’s implementation will provide for increased opportunities for affordable workforce home ownership or just provide more affordably priced workforce rental units,” Village of North Chevy Chase Councilmember Maury Mechanick testified Tuesday.
The proposed legislation was formally introduced by councilmembers Andrew Friedson (D-Dist.1) and Natali Fani-González (D-Dist. 6) in early February. It 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).
According to the sponsors, the legislation was inspired by public conversations concerning the Attainable Housing Strategies Initiative proposed by the county Planning Board in 2024, but 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.
That proposed initiative sparked heated debate among public officials and community members last year. 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 idea 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.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Marla Schulman told the council that she and her husband had raised their children, who are now in their early 20s, in the county. She said she supports the More Housing N.O.W. legislation because her children cannot afford to live in the county unless she and her husband subsidize their rents.
“There isn’t a single one of our friends whose recently college-graduated children [are] able to afford to live here on their own without some kind of assistance,” Schulman said. “These are bright and talented individuals who are choosing to set down roots elsewhere instead of here in Montgomery County — a tremendous loss.”
Silver Spring resident Scott Goldberg, a board member of the Greater Bethesda Chamber of Commerce and a candidate for an at-large seat on the County Council in 2026, said passage of the legislative package would encourage residents to stay in the county.
“Converting underused office buildings to apartments is a good thing. Allowing for more units to exist on main roads is a good thing,” Goldberg said. “There are people, our friends and neighbors, those who will never meet, who need and deserve to be able to afford to live near great schools, live near great jobs, stay in the neighborhoods they know and love. Too often, that’s not possible in today’s Montgomery County.”
Patrick Haney, 26, also said he supports the legislative package. He and his fiancé are currently renting in Gaithersburg and don’t anticipate being able to buy a home in the county under the current housing conditions.
“As young adults not yet on the property ladder, and amid ever-growing housing costs, our prospects for purchasing a home of any kind here seem depressing,” Haney said. “What’s bleak is that we have well-paying jobs. I’m an aerospace engineer, she’s a software engineer, yet the unyielding high price of housing in MoCo pushes us to look elsewhere for a place to settle down.”
Concern about impact of proposals
The Planning Board, which initially proposed the Attainable Housing Strategies Initiative, also supports the legislative package.
“In the past 20 years, we’ve lost over 26,000 middle income residents. These are our teachers, first responders and more who can no longer afford the type of housing they are seeking in our county,” Planning Board Chair Artie Harris testified Tuesday. “We’ve also seen a continuing decline of housing affordability throughout the whole region. Over the past 20 years, every ZIP code in the county has lost affordability.”
But detractors aren’t convinced that the proposed legislative package is the answer to the local housing affordability issues and worry it could impact their own neighborhoods.
Brit Siman-Tov, a resident of Silver Spring’s Kemp Mill neighborhood, said she is concerned the proposed zoning changes would displace her family and impact her lifestyle as an Orthodox Jew.
“Our family depends on being within walking distance of our local Kosher market and our close-knit communities. Rezoning would displace families like mine,” Siman-Tov said.
Cherri Branson, testifying on behalf of the Montgomery County chapter of the NAACP, expressed concerns that the proposed zoning changes would disproportionately impact marginalized communities.
“If redevelopment makes affordable communities attractive to higher wealth households, residents in those communities, especially renters, could be displaced as housing costs rise from an influx of wealthier households moving into redeveloping communities,” Branson said.
Debbie Heller, a member of the Somerset Town Council, also was skeptical about whether the proposals would help, voicing concern that single-family homes would be torn down to create duplexes.
“What this legislation will provide for is vastly more market-rate housing that will be a developer’s dream, but what they will be able to do is buy houses and tear them down and instead of creating triplexes or larger, they will build duplexes and therefore avoid having to build any lower-income units,” Heller said. “I doubt the goal of 15% workforce housing will ever be achieved. I envision our corridors filled with market-rate duplexes.”
The next steps
The council’s Planning, Housing and Parks Committee is scheduled to hold work sessions on the legislative package on March 24, 27 and 31. A full council vote has not yet been scheduled.
County Executive Marc Elrich (D) has voiced strong opposition to the legislative package. He has suggested he would veto any portions that pass the council.
“We’ve got so much housing in [the pipeline] that’s ready to build, and we’ve made no effort to figure out why it’s not being built. And we’ve got the opportunity to see what happens in terms of how our population shifts or doesn’t shift. There’s no need to do any of this stuff right now,” Elrich said at a recent press briefing.
Under the council’s Rules of Procedure, a supermajority of at least seven of the 11 councilmembers must vote in favor of overriding a county executive’s veto. None of Elrich’s six previous veto attempts have been successful.
