Montgomery tries to spur affordable housing

Meanwhile, council member Nancy Floreen (D-At Large), a strong advocate for the business community, introduced legislation earlier this month that would broaden a tax exemption for developers who construct affordable housing near county-designated development areas.

“You need as many tools as you can come up with to ensure a good, consistent supply of affordable housing,” she said.

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The county’s affordable housing crunch has been on the minds of county officials for years, and it’s been a priority for County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) during his five-year tenure as the highest-ranking county official. But the problem crystallized in November, when a local economist, Stephen S. Fuller, delivered a presentation that council members called eye-opening.

Projections of urgent need

Fuller, the director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, provided a breakdown of the current state of the county’s economy. What struck council members most were his estimates of the county’s housing needs.

According to Fuller’s data, the county will need 33,000 to 50,000 more housing units over the next decade for families making $100,000 a year or less. A little more than half of those units must accommodate families that make less than $50,000 a year.

And the projections apply only to the people coming into the county over the next decade, Fuller said at the hearing. They don’t address the residents already waiting for housing.

County Planning Director Rollin B. Stanley said he has met with housing officials and hopes the new policy is creative in bolstering affordable housing. He added that the streamlining of the zoning process will encourage developers to build more housing, including affordable units.

Floreen’s bill, intended to also help out developers, takes aim at impact taxes, which help finance some infrastructure projects. A portion of the tax would be waived for developers who build twice the amount of affordable housing required by law. Currently, a developer must build 2.4 times the required amount to qualify for a partial waiver.

A public hearing on the bill is scheduled Jan. 24. Stanley says Floreen’s bill sounds like a “good” idea. Nelson said he is unsure of its potential impact.

Floreen said that even with the tax waiver, high-rise developers may not work in the county because of the expense related to affordable housing. For high-rise developers, the tax can reach more than $7,000 per apartment, she said.

“I have been doing this now for almost 30 years,” said Floreen, a former Planning Board member who has helped to author many affordable housing bills. “We still have not cracked the nut of affordable housing.”

Feeling trapped

Alford, 54, is a single mother who moved to her current apartment because she thought it would be a good place to raise her daughter, Sheilia. Now a senior at Trinity Washington University, Sheilia often comes home to stay with her mother at the apartment complex on Pear Tree Court.

It is no longer the cushy place it once was, Alford said. Gone are the community center, the gym and the microwaves in every kitchen. The landlord doesn’t want to maintain them, Alford said.

Alford has wanted to leave for years but has given up on finding another place. She makes her rent payments almost every month, even though her part-time salary was $2,000 a month. She says she has bad credit, so she’s stuck.

For the past month, she has been trying to rest. She is earning only about $200 to $300 a week as an in-home nursing assistant and is living off money that an acquaintance owed her. She says she suffers from chronic pain, probably caused by lifting people when she worked as a nurse technician. (She doesn’t know precisely what’s wrong — she can’t afford to get a full work-up from a doctor — but sometimes sees a chiropractor.)

Alford says she will start working harder in March. She hopes to make more than her previous salary. She’ll need it; she expects her rent to increase around April.

“They need to have more affordable housing,” she said of the county. “There are too many people out there without it.”

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