Howard Schoenholtz and his wife, Phyllis, have lived for 27 years in their home on Ogden Court in Bethesda – a house that he said he knows he and his wife were lucky to be able to purchase in 1997 in a very different housing market.
“Change is needed,” Schoenholtz said, referring to the county’s lack of affordable housing while walking in his neighborhood recently. “I mean, Phyllis and I always say, if we were living somewhere else, and said today, ‘Oh, let’s go buy a house on Ogden Court,’ we couldn’t afford it.”
Schoenholtz lives in a neighborhood of single-family homes with small front yards that back up to River Road. While walking during an interview with MoCo360 on a December afternoon, he waved and spoke with several neighbors, including a man with his baby and a retired woman and her dog. Schoenholtz said he likes the diversity of his street, which he called “a melting pot.”
However, Schoenholtz is concerned that Montgomery County could take what he believes is the wrong approach to increasing its housing supply – an approach he fears could change the makeup of his neighborhood. He said he worries that if one of his neighbors sells their house, a developer could turn it into a multi-unit residential building.
“One of the things that a lot of our neighbors agree with us on is that when you have a [county] Planning Department that essentially looks at maps and draws lines, you don’t see houses. You don’t see people who live in the houses. You don’t see how many cars they have. You know, the planning process tends to get disconnected from the people,” Schoenholtz said while pointing to a printout of a Planning Department map of his neighborhood.
As the Montgomery County Council’s 2024 legislative session came to a close this month, one initiative is expected to continue to raise controversy well into the new year – a proposed zoning change that would allow duplexes, triplexes and smaller apartment buildings to be built in single-family home neighborhoods. Schoenholtz’s street is in the zone that could be affected if the proposal were to pass as it is currently written.
The council began deliberating in November about whether it should tackle the proposal approved in June by the Montgomery County Planning Board, which 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 the potential destruction of neighborhood character to the idea that the suggested housing types would not be considered affordable for many potential homeowners, while proponents of the strategy argue it would provide an effective way to increase homeownership opportunities for the middle class.
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.
Council President Kate Stewart (D-Dist. 4) told MoCo360 in an interview Thursday that she anticipates the council may propose some of the suggestions in the Planning Board’s proposal as potential zoning text amendments, but that nothing has been officially filed as legislation. She noted the Planning Board was tasked in 2017 by a previous group of councilmembers with reviewing options for missing middle housing, which resulted in the attainable housing proposal.
“This is like a menu of things that say, ‘Here are the different things that the council could consider doing to change our zones, to increase the supply of housing,’ ” Stewart said. “Which direction we take is now something that everyone is contemplating.”
Montgomery County isn’t the only jurisdiction in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area to grapple with the issue. The Board of Supervisors in Arlington County, Virginia, voted in March 2023 to end single-family-only zoning, facing praise and criticism from residents and resulting in a lawsuit. l
Trial arguments began in July after nine Arlington homeowners filed a lawsuit against the county over its new zoning policy, arguing the county made the decision without conducting an appropriate study of the potential impacts on communities, WAMU reported. A circuit court judge struck down the policy in September, saying officials did not conduct adequate studies of how the proposed housing changes could impact single-family neighborhoods, The Washington Post reported.
The decision is now headed back to court. On Nov. 19, the Board of Supervisors officially voted to appeal the judge’s ruling, according to WAMU.
In nearby Alexandria, Virginia, a group of homeowners sued the city over a decision to end single-family zoning. While city officials attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed, a judge ruled in August that it can move forward to trial, The Washington Post reported.
Katie Cristol, a former member of the Arlington County Board of Supervisors, pushed for passage of the policy in her home county.
“The choice is not to freeze our community in amber. We don’t get actually to pull a lever that says let’s keep a bunch of really charming and affordable single-family bungalows that will be affordable to middle-class nonprofit professionals and [federal employees] and keep everything in amber, especially not in Arlington, and I know not in Montgomery County,” Cristol said in October during a bus tour of her county organized by Greater Greater Washington.
The organization, which advocates for housing, transportation and land use policy in the Washington, D.C., region, invited Montgomery County residents and elected officials on the Oct. 18 tour that showcased examples of missing middle housing in Arlington that could be possible in Montgomery County if the attainable housing initiative is passed. A MoCo360 reporter also attended the tour. Greater Greater Washington supports the Planning Board’s proposal.
Elrich says no to initiative
Perhaps Montgomery County’s loudest opponent of the proposed zoning initiative is County Executive Marc Elrich (D). Elrich’s main criticism is that the proposal focuses on so-called “missing middle” housing as opposed to affordable housing.
“[It does] nothing useful. I’ll be blunt – I’m hardcore against it,” Elrich told hosts Kojo Nnamdi and Tom Sherwood during WAMU’s “The Politics Hour” on Dec. 6. “You’ve got a few people who are ideologues who basically hate suburbs and think everything should be urbanized.”
“Missing middle” housing 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.
Due to their smaller size, such “missing middle” housing types can be more financially attainable for downsizing homeowners, professionals without children, middle-income and millennial families, and newcomers to the region who can’t afford or may not need a large single-family home, the planning department says.
According to Montgomery Planning data, the county has 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.
If the council were interested in any of the recommendations outlined in the Planning Board’s initiative, the council would be required to draft a zoning text amendment (ZTA), according to Livhu Ndou, the council’s senior legislative attorney. The ZTA would be subject to the same public hearing and voting process as any other proposed legislation that came before the council.
“The feedback loop has not ended, and the formal legislative process has not started,” then-council President Andrew Friedson (D-Dist. 1) said during the council’s Nov. 19 meeting, 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.”
In search of missing middle housing
What could this potential zoning change look like in action? Greater Greater Washington’s October tour in Arlington County aimed to answer that question.
“We’ve been involved in some really difficult conversations in this [Montgomery] county,” Dan Reed, regional policy director for Greater Greater Washington, told tour participants. “We are hitting very close to the core of people’s values and lives.”
Reed encouraged the initiative’s supporters to keep an open mind and to be respectful in ongoing conversations with people who oppose or are ambivalent about the proposal.
Councilmembers Natali Fani-González (D-Dist. 6) and Dawn Luedtke (D-Dist. 7) attended the tour, as well as staff members from the offices of councilmembers Marilyn Balcombe (D-Dist. 2), Evan Glass (D-At-large), Will Jawando (D-At-large) and Kristin Mink (D-Dist. 5).
Cristol volunteered her neighborhood of Majestic Oak, which includes both smaller single-family homes and rows of townhouses, as an example of missing middle housing. The neighborhood was designed by an architect who figured out how to put six smaller homes on the same size lot as one single-family home, Cristol said.
While each property has a smaller yard than those of many traditional single-family homes, the neighborhood includes joint greenspace between the houses. As a young mom, Cristol, the former member of the Arlington County Board of Supervisors, said having the greenspace for her children to run and play wa important.
“I knew this anecdotally, as the first millennial on the board, that millennials were facing a growing home ownership crisis,” Cristol said. “Arlington had really developed … tight, tight concentration around our transit areas of high-rise apartments while protecting the single-family neighborhoods from anything other than the ‘one house per one lot’ type of development. And that worked, I think, pretty well for a long time.”
But Cristol said she and some of her colleagues found that many Arlington residents who were ready to buy houses and settle down with their families couldn’t afford the same starter homes that their parents and previous generations had. And antiquated housing that was being redeveloped was often torn down to create less affordable, bigger houses on smaller lots.
“An entire generation was starting to look around to get opportunities to buy into Arlington for their future and realize they were being completely shut out,” Cristol said. “We were seeing this total polarization of our housing stock because land values were so high. The housing that was getting redeveloped was bigger and bigger and bigger — five, six bedrooms, many thousands of square feet.”
Alli Henry, a community planning director for Rosslyn Business Improvement District in Virginia, spends her day working on planning. But the housing crisis facing her generation is personal, she told the tour participants.
Henry and her husband wanted to move out of a large, high-rise apartment building in Arlington where they didn’t know their neighbors’ names, but couldn’t afford a single-family home. Henry said she was fortunate to find a stacked condo, but the couple had to sell their family car to afford it. Later, she and her husband were able to buy their own stacked townhome, which they chose in part because of its architecture and how it blended in with other Arlington homes.
“When you know you’re going through these conversations of first educating people about what missing middle housing is, maybe the opposition starts to show some images that are really not flattering, and it’s not the kind of structure that you might want next door to you,” Henry told tour participants. “But I think it’s really important to show a variety of … examples of like, here’s something that’s built. My personal opinion was that the architecture really, really stuck out to me. This is something I felt was unique to Arlington.”
Henry said one of her favorite features of her neighborhood, which includes mixed housing types, is its walkability. Her son attends a Montessori school that is steps away from the family’s home.
“To be honest, this might not be my forever home, but it’s absolutely amazing to have this at this stage in my life,” Henry said. “When I move on, somebody else gets it, and that’s kind of the beauty of it, right?”
Pros and cons in MoCo
During the council’s public listening sessions in Montgomery County, some county residents discussed having experiences similar to those of Cristol and Henry and their desire for more housing types to make home ownership more accessible. But other community members said they were concerned the kinds of housing that would be built if zoning rules were changed might not be affordable for prospective homeowners or could change the character of existing single-family neighborhoods.
Schoenholtz said he isn’t opposed to the idea of the county allowing more types of housing and reevaluating where they can be built. He could even see a duplex or a triplex fitting into his neighborhood – if he had more information about the parameters and requirements for developers. Still, he cited concerns about potential results such as school overcrowding and not enough parking spaces. He wondered whether Pepco, the local utility, would be able to keep up with the electrical demand.
“Does some kind of change have to happen? Absolutely,” Schoenholtz said. “But I think it’s important to stop and consider, what are we looking to do? Who are we looking to build housing for? Because if the end result is more houses, different kinds of houses, that people still can’t afford, then you’ve not solved any problem.”
The question that has divided community members and public officials alike is whether the county needs more housing to be built.
Elrich says no.
“Your housing units aren’t going to be built if you don’t have the jobs,” Elrich told reporters during an Oct. 17 media meeting about the proposal.
Elrich said he bases his claim on a Metropolitan Washington Council of Government report that projected housing needs in Montgomery County. He believes that the organization miscalculated in its projection that the region needs 75,000 more housing units by 2030.
He said there aren’t enough jobs in the county to justify building more housing.
“You take your jobs number and you project how many housing units you need for it — and that’s because people don’t come here unless there are jobs,” Elrich said. “So if you don’t have enough jobs, you’re not going to build units. People are going to move here, spend a lot of money to go work someplace else and commute.”
Elrich said he wants the county to focus more on bolstering its affordable housing and rental assistance programs, rather than building new housing stock.
“This [initiative] is going to incentivize builders to go into neighborhoods is what worries me,” Elrich said.
During the recent council discussions about the proposal, councilmembers didn’t take a hard stance on the proposed zoning changes, but did voice strong – and sometimes opposing – views on how the county’s housing disparities should be handled.
Fani-González said she largely supported many of the ideas in the proposed initiative, but not all. She pushed back on Elrich’s claims about neighborhoods being taken over.
“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.”
Other councilmembers, including Sidney Katz (D-Dist. 3), related to 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.
Some councilmembers, including Luedtke, said they believe building more housing is the answer.
“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.
Speaking as someone who has been through the process, Cristol said it is really important for Montgomery County officials to continue to engage with community members who hold a variety of viewpoints.
“I think the reason this is successful [in Arlington] is it cannot be ‘the county versus residents,’ Cristol said. “It has to be residents with different points of view about what they want for the community’s future, and for people to hear from one another.”
But she also cautioned that it is not productive for community members to get belligerent with each other or elected officials.
“People are clearly very eager to get things off their chest, and they want to be heard by their public officials, and that’s their right, and that’s what we’re here to do,” Cristol said of Arlington County’s debate. “But some people wanted to get into a fight with their public officials, and that was not something that we were gonna do.”
