The Montgomery County Council began discussions Tuesday about whether it should tackle a proposed zoning initiative that would allow duplexes, triplexes and smaller apartment buildings to be built in single-family home neighborhoods across the county.
The proposal has sparked heated debate among public officials and community members. Hundreds of community members attended the council’s series of listening sessions on the proposed changes in September and October. Critics of the proposal have cited concerns ranging from destruction of neighborhood character to the suggested housing types not being affordable enough, while proponents of the strategy argue it would be an effective way to increase homeownership opportunities for the middle class.
During Tuesday’s discussion, dozens packed the council’s Rockville chambers, some holding signs opposing the initiative, although the council was not holding a public hearing on the initiative.
Councilmember Gabe Albornoz (D-At-large) noted Tuesday that the public’s response to the proposal had been so fervent that residents have stopped him to talk about it while he was walking his dog, standing in line at Safeway and watching his children’s sports games.
“It is a good thing that people are engaged and involved in this conversation,” Albornoz said.
Drafted by county planners, 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. The changes, which the council would have to approve, aim to provide more housing options and opportunities, especially for middle-income residents, according to Planning Director Jason Sartori.
The Montgomery County Planning Board approved the initiative in June, sending it to the council. However, the council has not developed proposed legislation regarding the initiative nor set a timeline for a vote. Next steps for the proposal have not been scheduled.
According to Livhu Ndou, the council senior legislative attorney, the council would be required to draft a zoning text amendment (ZTA) if it chose to move forward with any of the recommendations in the Planning Board’s proposal. The ZTA would be subject to the same public hearing and voting process as any other legislation that came before the council.
“The feedback loop has not ended and the formal legislative process has not started,” council President Andrew Friedson (D-Dist. 1) said Tuesday, addressing some residents’ fears that a zoning change is imminent. “The ZTA process is methodical. Statutorily, we couldn’t move it quickly if we wanted to. Legally, we don’t have the authority to do that.”
Councilmember Natali Fani-González (D-Dist. 6) said she largely supported many of the ideas in the proposed initiative, but not all. She said it’s important for community members to understand the council can choose which, if any, recommendations outlined in the proposal should be included if it decides to draft a ZTA.
“This is a menu of options,” Fani-González said. “No, we’re not taking over your house. No, we’re not taking over your neighborhood.”
Councilmember Evan Glass (D-At-large) said he is concerned by the growing number of residents with whom he has spoken who say they can’t afford to buy a home in the county.
“I hear all too often from recent college grads, from young married couples, from people who just graduated law school or [are] starting at a firm or working with the local government that their loans are so much they can’t afford to buy a house,” Glass said. “Affordable, attainable – I don’t care what we call it. We just need to make it accessible.”
County Executive Marc Elrich (D) has been vocal about his distaste for the proposal, with his main critique being that it focuses on so-called “missing middle” housing as opposed to affordable housing. The term refers to “a range of building types that are compatible in scale, form and construction with single-family homes, but include multiple housing units,” according to Montgomery Planning.
These housing options were common during the pre-World War II era but faded from popularity with new construction of single-family homes and tall multi-family apartment buildings, according to the planning department.
“They’re not trying to build affordable housing. They started talking about affordable housing in the very beginning, but when people realized that’s not what they were doing, they just dropped the word affordable, and they called it attainable. But it’s not attainable to everybody, and it’s not going to be attainable to everybody,” Elrich said at an October media briefing.
A lack of affordable housing options
According to Sartori, the average sales price of a single-family detached home in the county in 2023 was $970,000 and, in the first four months of 2024, that figure had increased to more than $1 million.
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 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.
In the county, middle-income is defined as a family of four earning an income three to five times the poverty level, according to Montgomery Planning. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says the 2024 poverty level is $31,200 for a family of four. Low-income families in the county earn under three times the poverty level and high-income families earn five or more times the poverty level, according to Montgomery Planning.
Mixed views on the proposal
As residents continue to voice their concerns about the initiative, council members have questions, concerns and ideas about ways to provide more housing in the county.
Councilmember Dawn Luedtke (D-Dist. 7) said more outreach is needed to educate residents about the impact of possible zoning changes. She also said there is no “omnibus bill or ZTA” that would fix the county’s housing crisis.
“I just say increase the supply of housing, period, because the issue is a supply and demand problem at its heart, and we cannot cure any of it … without overall increase in [the] numbers of housing units, period,” Luedtke said.
Luedtke also said she wanted to reassure residents that nobody’s personal property would be impacted.
“We can’t undo, and we won’t undo what exists in people’s deeds,” she said, addressing concerns that people’s houses would be torn down or that new housing would be built on existing personal property.
Councilmember Kristin Mink (D-Dist. 5) said she wants the council to “dig deeper” before moving forward with anything.
“We can’t just like, willy nilly, throw out proposals that might sound good, and just think that it’s going to solve the problem,” Mink said. “We have to do our due diligence and make sure that we’re doing this in a very strategic way.”
For his part, councilmember Sidney Katz (D-Dist. 3) said he could understand the skepticism about the proposal expressed by some community members.
“The reality is that the county is facing a housing crisis … but I don’t know that what is being suggested really does solve it,” Katz said.
However, he pushed back on criticism by some community members that the public had not been given adequate opportunities for input.
“Many times people complain that we didn’t let them know before we vote on anything … they throw their hands up, say this is already a done deal,” Katz said. “So this time we had listening sessions before we’ve actually seen one word of any potential legislation, but people still complain… it’s like we can’t win.”
The council held five in-person listening sessions across the county in September and one virtual session on Zoom in October.
A data analysis released Monday by Greater Greater Washington using county records found that 78% percent of 1,037 people who signed up for a council listening session on the proposal were white – in comparison, 41% of county residents are white. One third of all listening session participants lived in the 20815 ZIP code, which consists of Chevy Chase, one of the county’s wealthiest communities. More than half of participants were 60 or older.
“The Montgomery County Council wants to make it easier to build more homes, and more kinds of homes, in its neighborhoods – but a group of very loud opponents are trying to stop them,” Dan Reed, regional policy director for Greater Greater Washington, wrote in the advocacy group’s analysis. “We looked at who’s speaking out on this proposal and found that they’re significantly older and whiter than the county as a whole, and many of them come from one of the county’s wealthiest ZIP codes.”
But some residents who attended the council’s discussion on Tuesday told MoCo360 they disagreed with the sentiment that only older, white residents opposed the proposal.
“The strategy is not addressing the issue of gentrification, and the issue not only [of] gentrification, but the issue of displacement,” said county resident Monica Reyes, who is Latina. “Most of the Latino community, we don’t have the means to buy $150,000 houses … we can’t afford market rate, and we could be displaced from Montgomery County.”
Jeremiah Pope, who ran for the council’s District 5 seat in the 2022 Democratic primary, shared a similar sentiment.
“The media is trying to spin it like it’s just rich white residents in Chevy Chase [who oppose the proposal],” Pope said. “We need to take a step back, get more diverse people in the room, meet people where they’re at.”
