Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich by Edward Kimmel licensed under Creative Commons.

Montgomery County should not plan build more housing that would be affordable for working-class and middle-income families because he does not believe data showing that the county will need them, County Executive Marc Elrich said at a joint press conference on Tuesday, November 12. Bucking others in the region, the county, and his own council—including Council President Nancy Navarro, who co-presented Montgomery’s new economic development strategy with him at the presser—Elrich argued against proposed affordable housing targets.

Like much of the Washington region, Montgomery County has a housing shortage, a Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) report shows. It needs to build tens of thousands of new housing units in the next decade, many of them affordable to low- and middle-income people. The county’s housing targets contained in its new economic development strategy are based on COG’s report, as well as research from the Urban Institute projecting Montgomery will need 23,100 low-cost units, 18,100 mid-cost units, and 6,300 high-cost units.

In remarks criticizing the goals, Elrich said, “That [COG] report presumes the county’s job growth is going to include 10,000 households making less than $30,000 a year, but that’s not the kind of growth we want here.”

But the report does not say that the county will only add low-wage jobs, as it seems Elrich interpreted. It projects that one-third of new jobs will pay less than $43,500 and that retiring baby boomers will be behind much of the growth in lower-income households. As Bethesda Magazine wrote, “a resident would need to make approximately $51,960 a year after taxes to comfortably afford a unit at the upper range of the low-cost band — widely defined as spending no more than 30% of monthly income on rent or mortgage payments, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Elected leaders in DC and Fairfax County have embraced the housing targets, and the County Council unanimously supported them on November 6. Tuesday’s presser was supposed to highlight agreement between the branches, but instead Elrich spoke out against the housing target portion of the plan he and Navarro were co-presenting.

“Regional leaders have come together behind this plan with a nationally renowned think tank,” Councilmember Hans Riemer said to the Post. “And here, Marc Elrich stands alone opposing them because he thinks he has a better answer. . . . It’s very frustrating.”

Councilmembers and the Executive have frequently disagreed about how to respond to the county’s growing housing challenges. Perhaps the most recent high-profile argument was over the council’s legislation to allow more by-right development of accessory apartments (also known as Accessory Dwelling Units or ADUs). Elrich opposed the measure ostensibly for not doing enough to help the county’s poor. Others say he was trying to please wealthy homeowners who make up his base.

Elrich also has a history of inflammatory statements about policy like when he dismissed the need for efforts to encourage the private sector to build homes that middle-income residents can afford, or compared Purple Line development to “ethnic cleansing.”

What do studies reveal about Montgomery’s future?:

The COG report analyzed housing needs and employment projections across the Washington region and within each county. Key findings for Montgomery County include:

  • Today, the county has 375,000 households. About 160,000 are LMI households who can afford to pay no more than $1,299 per month for housing. Yet 55,000 of those households actually live in homes that are not affordable for them;
  • By 2030, to account for anticipated job growth, an aging population, and other factors, Montgomery County needs to build 47,500 new homes—but until now has planned for about 10,000 fewer than that;
  • Over the next decade the fastest-growing demographic will be low-income households; we will add about 11,500 new households earning less than about $33,000 per year.
  • To meet Montgomery County residents’ needs, more than 60% (28,000) of all new homes constructed in the next decade should be affordable to the households making $70,000 or less;
  • The majority of new homes should be sited in inner-ring suburbs, in public transit-rich neighborhoods, and/or in close proximity to major job centers.

The report’s projections were developed by independent economists using data from the US Census and Bureau of Labor Statistics. While the future is not guaranteed, these are strong, evidence-based estimates.

Several ongoing demographic trends are shaping the distribution of these additional households and their income. First, the county is aging rapidly. Some of the households with less than $33,000 in income will be current residents who retire on fixed incomes; the mean income for the county’s Social Security recipients is just $20,300 per year, according to the American Community Survey.

Additionally, the county is currently home to nearly 30,000 households with a single parent and children, a trend that is likely to persist as millennials marry at lower rates than previous generations. A $33,000 income equates to a full-time hourly rate of $16.50, several dollars above the county’s minimum wage.

When Elrich says “that’s not the kind of growth we want,” he implies that he does not want to meet the housing needs of young workers just starting their careers, paramedics, addiction treatment specialists, home health aides, nonprofit staffers, restaurant waitstaff, garbage and recycling collectors, hair stylists, grocery store cashiers, and more.

It is worth noting that the new economic development plan’s desired outcomes are to create a “thriving and diversified economy; racial equity and social justice; innovation; and environmental sustainability”—all goals represented in the Elrich administration’s Vision for a More Equitable and Inclusive Montgomery County.

What’s next?

The county’s new economic development strategy addresses not only housing, but also transportation, business development, and workforce development. It is currently a one-page summary, and council staff are preparing detailed plans to be released in February 2020.

The housing crunch is an urgent problem, and the County Executive and councilmembers’ ongoing disagreements about the types of housing we need, where it should be located, and how county dollars should be invested is discouraging. If Navarro and Elrich’s joint press conference is a sign of things to come, the political gridlock will worsen. However, they have the opportunity, as they continue to flesh out the new economic development strategy, to create a pathway to cooperation and progress.