Montgomery County needs more affordable housing.
That’s the reality top county officials are facing as they work to spur less costly housing in a county that has seen a rise in its immigrant, working-class and elderly populations.
It’s also the reality that Lyn E. Alford has been facing for years. She has lived in her two-bedroom Aspen Hill apartment since 1994 and has seen the building’s amenities gradually disappear. But she can’t move: The $1,202 she pays in monthly rent is below market rate, and she doesn’t make enough money to persuade other landlords in Montgomery that she’s a viable tenant.
Over the next few months, county planning and housing officials will propose broad policy changes intended to improve the local housing market and help Alford and other cash-strapped residents. They say they want to encourage more affordable housing near transit areas and keep the residences the county already has that are affordable for people with modest incomes.
Yet the county, which has seen year after year of budget shortfalls, also must deal with less funding. The housing department budget for the current fiscal year is 50 percent of what it was two years ago.
“We have no money,” Richard Y. Nelson Jr., the department’s director, said in an interview. “Whether it’s subsidizing housing or development, it’s a very expensive process. Particularly these days with reduced general revenues, it’s harder to do.”
Affordable housing has been an important issue across the Washington region, and the economic troubles of the past few years have made the issue even more urgent and more complicated. In Fairfax County, for instance, the subject has divided the 10-member Board of Supervisors and the community.
Affordable housing takes a number of forms, such as apartments and town houses. In Montgomery, immigrant advocates want the government to mandate more affordable housing units in new developments, while home builders want alternatives to the affordable housing requirements, such as one-time payments to opt out of building the units.
Meanwhile, the county is getting poorer and more ethnically diverse. Adjusting for inflation, its median household income dropped over the past decade, during which the county also became majority-minority.
The shift in county demographics — as well as the nationwide foreclosure crisis a few years ago — has led to increased demand for affordable housing, county officials said. There have been tens of thousands of people on waiting lists for housing vouchers, which use government money to subsidize fair-market rent for people who can’t afford it.
“Many tools”
Facing these challenges, county officials are working to strengthen their affordable housing programs — though in a separate, somewhat amorphous fashion.
This month, the housing department will announce a revised version of its countywide housing policy, last approved by county legislators in 2001. The policy is expected, among other things, to encourage multifamily and affordable senior housing.
County planners also are trying to play a role in addressing the housing problem by rewriting the zoning code. Early this year, they are expected to announce changes that would trim bureaucratic processes and allow developers to put units more quickly on the market, which should lower housing costs countywide.
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