“Stop Rezoning’ Lawn sign in East Silver Spring. by Dan Reed.

The cost of housing in Montgomery County has been escalating for years. While recent housing initiatives coupled with local and countywide plans like Thrive 2050 provide an opportunity to change course, they have also stirred up no small amount of controversy. As people make up their minds about these proposals, it’s important to earnestly confront what preserving the status quo means.

There is general agreement that lots of dense housing should be placed in Downtown Silver Spring, and this makes a lot of sense. There is ample and growing access to transit, mixed-use zoning, amenities, and businesses that benefit from high foot traffic.

It’s also true that these benefits don’t suddenly end where the zoning changes. That’s why many residents in communities adjacent to downtown Silver Spring such as Woodside, Woodside Park, and East Silver Spring, have been supportive of the reforms. They welcome efforts to increase the density and variety of housing to improve affordability and access to their walkable neighborhoods.

Yet some residents of these primarily single-family-zoned neighborhoods oppose the idea of adding duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes in “house scale” structures to their communities, while still allowing single-family homes. Signs decrying “annexation”—the seizing or incorporation of land from one entity to another—have popped up in opposition in Woodside. Some residents claim the new housing would be a windfall for developers while not acknowledging that their own potential profits have also skyrocketed as home values increase—due in part to the limited supply of single-family houses spurred by restrictive zoning that only allows the construction of detached houses.

It’s not just members of the public espousing these views. A spokesperson for County Executive Marc Elrich argued before the Silver Spring Citizens’ Advisory Board that the county should “finish our urban centers” before looking elsewhere to build dense housing, dismissing the aforementioned plexes as “market-rate housing.” In an exchange during an affordable housing forum in April, Mr. Elrich himself talked about the “enormous unbuilt capacity” in existing zoning as a reason to oppose wider upzoning.

Stop the Annexation lawn sign in Woodside. by Dan Reed.

It is no secret that redlining and restrictive covenants have historically led to racial discrimination in housing, particularly in affluent suburbs. What some seem not to realize is that even with those explicitly racist measures no longer on the books, single-family zoning helps perpetuate this segregation.

The Center for American Progress explains how single-family zoning and historical discrimination have been a devastating combination: “As white households typically had higher incomes and access to a range of federal home loan programs, single-family zoning produced racially segregated neighborhoods without explicit race-based ordinances. With a greater tax base and support from federal programs, these areas could afford public goods that others could not and, as a result, experienced greater real estate appreciation.”

The Brookings Institution calls out our county specifically for these failures, noting that “the absence of development in job and transit-rich centrally located neighborhoods throughout the District, Fairfax County, and Montgomery County reflects both formal regulations- low-density zoning and historic preservation- and the political clout of long-standing homeowners who organize to oppose change. These anti-growth efforts by affluent communities harm more than the physical environment; they also exacerbate long-standing economic and racial inequality and push low-income households into longer commutes from distant exurbs.”

When too much weight is given to existing residents and homeowners over what gets built in their neighborhoods, what in effect you have is a population shaped by decades of racist and classist segregation having virtual veto power over what happens in their economically segregated neighborhoods.

It may sound reasonable that the people “most affected” by change get the most say, but this isn’t exactly a randomly selected population. It’s actually illogical to defer to people who happened to make the cut during a time when discriminatory policies made it all but impossible for many people to move into a neighborhood.

In most cases—though certainly not all—people in single-family neighborhoods that oppose upzoning aren’t motivated by direct racial animus. However, they are still acting as gatekeepers because they want to keep their neighborhoods the way they like them. But when that status quo systematically excludes so many, homeowner comfort and input can’t be allowed to rule the day as it so often has in the past.

For too long, many well-meaning progressives have espoused the value of racial and economic equality while opposing the very kind of change to their neighborhoods that would allow diversity and increase opportunity for those who have long been shut out.

The average price of a detached single-family home in Montgomery County is almost $800,000, compared to $370,000 for attached structures. So when someone says they welcome anyone who wants to live next door while simultaneously defending single-family zoning, they are effectively saying that you are welcome to live here so long as you are rich enough to afford that kind of price premium.

Thankfully there is an increasing consensus on the left that restrictive zoning has a harmful impact on racial and economic equality. No less than the Biden administration has called out bans on multifamily housing, not to mention the impact of minimum lot sizes and parking minimums, for increasing housing costs and locking families out of areas with these restrictions.

If you want to be more than a performative ally against classism and racism, you have to put your zoning where your mouth is. You can’t just ask other neighborhoods to make room for new residents, you have to join with people that realize change is long overdue.

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.