Exclusion of affordable housing from large developments like Grand Oaks and Nocatee is invidiously discriminatory -- the result from developer-directed St. Johns County Commissioners, every single one of them a white, male Republican.
When the Grand Oaks developer demanded deletion of multi-family housing there was no discussion.
When the Nocatee developer demanded deletion of 40 acres of affordable housing. Commissioners did what they were told.
Other-directed? You betcha.
As former St. Johns County Commission Chair Ben Rich, Sr. told Folio Weekly Magazine in 2008, "St Johns County is one of the last bastions of the Ku Klux Klan." It shows.
More Affordable Housing Could Come To Montgomery County’s Priciest Neighborhoods
Ally Schweitzer
Montgomery County has a shortage of affordable housing, and new legislation could help fill the gap. But Council President Hans Riemer says more must be done.
Salem Eames / Flickr
The Montgomery County Council took steps to bring more affordable housing to the area last week, passing two bills that modify housing laws in one of the country’s most expensive places to live.
The first, sponsored by Council President Hans Riemer, increases the amount of affordable housing developers must set aside in residential projects — but only in the county’s most affluent districts. The second, sponsored by Council member Nancy Floreen, makes a host of changes to the county’s Moderately Priced Dwelling Units program.
The areas in yellow would be subject to higher affordable housing requirements.Montgomery County
Under current law, developers of larger residential projects — buildings with 20 or more units — have to designate at least 12.5 percent of those living spaces as moderately priced dwelling units, or MPDUs. Riemer’s bill raises the requirement to 15 percent — measured in either number of units or square footage — in places where “greater than 45 percent of census tracts have a median household income that is 150 percent or higher than median household income of the county as a whole,” according to a council press release.
That includes tony areas such as Potomac, Chevy Chase and Bethesda, where residents have access to the county’s top-performing schools.
“This bill helps young families that are trying to find a place to live and get a foothold in Montgomery County,” Riemer tells WAMU. “It provides them with predictability and a good-quality place to live, and one where hopefully their future is very secure.”
The county’s MPDU program targets households that earn between 50 and 70 percent of area median income, or AMI. In Montgomery County, the AMI is currently $117,200 for a family of four, according to the Department of Housing and Community Affairs. That means a four-person household earning between $58,600 and $82,040 a year is eligible for the program, which caps rents at 30 percent of their income.
As opposed to housing for very low-income residents, Riemer says, MPDUs are “typically going to be starter-home price units … [where] the rent would be affordable to people of modest incomes.”
The other housing bill that passed last week, introduced by Floreen, makes a number of technical changes to the county’s 45-year-old MPDU program. The goal, Floreen says, is to “modernize” the guidelines for challenges that weren’t foreseen when the program was first established.
“This is a major cleanup and overhaul,” Floreen says. “We wanted more flexibility so that the Department of Housing and Community Affairs could be more creative and effective when it was negotiating deals for additional sets of units in Montgomery County.”
Residential projects with less than 20 units aren’t obligated to set aside MPDUs. But Floreen’s bill makes developers of smaller projects — those that have between 11 and 19 units — pay into the county’s Housing Initiative Fund, which helps acquire and preserve lower-cost housing.
But the bill also allows alternatives to building MPDUs, which may stoke skepticism among affordable-housing advocates.
For one, the legislation provides for “alternative payment agreements” that allow developers to pay a fee to the Housing Initiative Fund instead of building lower-cost units. For example, if a condominium development comes with high HOA fees that reduce affordability, or there are regulatory constraints at a site that make it unrealistic for a developer to build all its required MPDUs, it can pay a fee to the county equal to 3 percent of the sale price of each market-rate unit in the project.
Developers can also opt to locate MPDUs off-site, pending approval from DHCA’s director. Off-site MPDUs have to be in the same planning area as the rest of the development, unless that area is among the county’s most expensive, or DHCA provides the council with “good cause” for the alternative location.
Floreen says DHCA requested more flexibility after feeling hamstrung under previous rules, but the agency doesn’t negotiate many exceptions to MPDU requirements.
“These are rare situations,” Floreen says. “They deal with this issue once a year or once every couple of years.”
Hans Riemer says the bills — if they’re approved by County Executive Isiah Leggett as expected — will help fill a growing need for lower-cost housing in the county. But still, he says, they won’t solve the problem on their own.
A 2015 analysis by George Mason University estimated that nearly 15,000 additional affordable housing units must be built in Montgomery County to meet demand by 2023. Riemer says to get there, the county simply needs more housing — and lots of it.
“This is one small step,” Riemer says. “We really are behind. We need to see more investment in private housing in the county, and of course more investment with public dollars in housing in the county. This legislation helps in one area, but it’s far from a comprehensive solution.”
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