Downtown Silver Spring shopping center by Craig licensed under Creative Commons.

For the last several months, Montgomery County’s Planning Department has been administering the “visioning” phase of the Silver Spring downtown and Adjacent Communities Plan, which will determine zoning in and around Silver Spring’s downtown for decades to come.

The plan will carry forward principles currently outlined in the developing Thrive 2050 General plan for the county, such as improved affordability, walkable communities, and transit-oriented development. Most controversially, the plan includes modest upzoning of single-family-only neighborhoods close to transit to allow for missing middle housing, which the county defines as housing types that bridge the gap between single-family detached units and mid-rise apartment buildings.

As part of this effort, the department recently wrapped up its visioning sessions, a series of online conversations where community members could weigh in on the plan and share opinions on specific “opportunity sites” for replacement such as parking garages, and storage spaces.

Most of the attendees were supportive of the plan and of a generally urbanist vision, including building dense housing and mixed-use development on such sites. However, a long-running tension about Silver Spring caused debate among attendees.

A community divided

Many longtime residents view Silver Spring as a quiet, bedroom community, while newer residents view it very much as a city.

This divide showed itself particularly in the two “adjacent communities” sessions, a term referring to limited sections of Woodside, Woodside Park, and East Silver Spring. These areas were added to the plan due to their proximity to Silver Spring’s downtown core and transit.

The county planning department proposed allowing missing middle housing in these neighborhoods—primarily duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes. These “house scale” density proposals proved controversial. Many attendees argued that traffic, parking, trees, and runoff mitigation issues, among others, would be undesirable.

Silver Spring planning boundaries by Montgomery County Planning Department.

Others spoke of not wanting an “incursion” of density into their neighborhood and went so far as to call “forcing denser housing on single-family homeowners” an “authoritarian abuse of power” that “only benefits greedy, crony developers and their supporting realtors and public officials” (while making no mention of the wealth single-family homeowners living close to transit and other amenities have been accumulating as prices rise).

Some Woodside residents argued that their neighborhood already had a decent amount of missing middle housing and didn’t need more (while Woodside does have some townhomes, they are confined to the edges of the neighborhood, which remains mostly Single Family Home [SFH] only). Others said that denser housing should be added on a county property at the edge of the neighborhood rather than “stealing” blocks from the neighborhood.

The financial impact of upzoning was also a topic of contention. Some believed it would make homes more expensive and gentrify the area. However, the denser, largely newer construction areas of Downtown Silver Spring that border areas like Woodside and Takoma Park — which have predominantly single-family homes — have significantly more diverse and lower income populations than those surrounding single-family home dominated neighborhoods. This suggests gentrification is actually higher in the non-upzoned neighborhoods.

While these concerns about gentrification are often well-meaning, it’s far from a given that upzoning causes, rather than prevents, this type of displacement. Even if one grants this concept, that makes it even more important to upzone affluent SFH areas like the “adjacent communities” around downtown Silver Spring, so any impacts are not concentrated in disadvantaged communities.

What does this mean for Silver Spring and the surrounding area?

The central tension of suburb versus city continues.

Several upzoning opponents were quick to point out that there was “still room” in downtown Silver Spring, as if every parcel must be built upon before anywhere else can be considered — a tactic that could widen the existing economic and racial divide between downtown and surrounding SFH zoned areas.

For sure, market supply does not solve everything, and the county’s Moderately Priced Dwelling Units (MPDU) and developments dedicated to low-income housing will also be key to improving affordability. But there is limited land to build such housing unless zoning laws change.

It is clear that even modest reforms will cause anxiety and fear among those who resist change. And just as those voices have been heard and held sway, so must the anticipated population growth and current housing crisis in a county that likes to tout its progressive bonafides and has many people living in homes with at least 2 more bedrooms than people, showing demand for smaller dwellings.

Montgomery County zoning map, similar to the map above. The yellow areas only allow single-family homes.  Image by Montgomery County Planning Department.

The proposed zoning changes are welcome. However, with any change meeting so much resistance no matter how much of a compromise it represents, the county should consider more aggressive upzoning in the periphery around downtown Silver Spring. They should also consider adding more of the surrounding area into the plan boundaries.

We should allow projects like mid-rise apartments and condo buildings within the local plan boundaries and allow more modest missing middle structures across the county. It is also important to remember that upzoning is not a mandate. It would simply allow more options if the market and property owners/developers implement them.

The nation as a whole is reckoning with the harmful effects of single family zoning; and local sector plans like the one being discussed for Silver Spring don’t come around often. The current plans are a positive change, and missing middle housing should be applied on a wider scale. But the area in question has more access to transit than almost anywhere else in the region, and half measures alone will not get us out of this housing crisis.

Widespread new market-rate and income-restricted supply alike are needed to improve affordability, and we need to implement wide-scale, dramatic zoning reform to make both of them possible. Both the County Council and Planning Department/Board need to act. There simply won’t be the needed units otherwise.

Michael English is a resident of Downtown Silver Spring. He holds a  B.A. in Political Science from Southern Connecticut State University and a Masters of Public Administration from George Mason University. He is passionate about matters of county governance and housing affordability. Mr. English is a member of the steering committee of Montgomery for All. All views expressed in this piece are his alone.