The Chevy Chase Library: A surprising victory, and a new responsibility

When I wrote my recent piece about the rally to support housing at the Chevy Chase Library, its opposition, and what it meant for the fight against NIMBYism in our region, I was cautiously optimistic that the narrative was starting to change, especially after the rally got heavy regional coverage. That said, I did not see what happened next coming.

The Montgomery County Council is in the middle of budget season, both the operating budget (staff, day to day expenditures, etc) and the Capital Improvement Program (CIP) which concerns buildings, roads, and other long term, well, capital investments. After a rally, related action alerts, calls, emails, and numerous other efforts, at-large county councilmember Will Jawando, with backing from fellow at-large councilmember Hans Riemer, proposed a simple but important amendment to the county’s CIP budget for libraries.

The amendment removes the Chevy Chase library from the county’s refresh list, and mandates that some form of housing be included on the site when it eventually does go forward. Some councilmembers expressed reservations. Others expressed worries that this was an imperfect solution. But the amendment eventually passed unanimously this past Thursday (May 12).

While this is a big win, and one that should be celebrated, there are still a thousand things that could keep this from happening, and as multiple councilmembers pointed out during the voting session, it is too early to know what scale, and what type of housing this will be.

This is where it gets a bit tricky, and where advocates, including myself, need to find a tough mix of being vigilant in the push for affordable housing while being realistic about what can be achieved. This is public land and it should be used for public good. While I will consider any housing on the site a victory, I personally am hoping that a good share of units will be deeply affordable, ideally in the 30-50% of Area Median Income (AMI) range. That won’t happen, however, without a large number of units/other concessions to the eventual developer, a lot of government subsidy, or a mix of both. I hope that as much of this project can be affordable as is feasible, but that isn’t as simple as it sounds.

100% affordable housing should seldom, if ever, be a demand, even if it can be a good goal.

All too often people oppose anything that isn’t “truly affordable housing” as a reason not to allow something with market rate units to be built, while they handwave away the difficulties of financing to make it work. This demand can often be one of many excuses (see parking, traffic, neighborhood character, tree loss, etc…) used to let well meaning progressives oppose needed housing all the while clothing themselves in righteous armor and forgetting, or simply not caring, that 100% of zero is zero.

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich was already suggesting he would only accept 100% affordable housing on this site before the amendment was passed, and separately noted in an email that it “simply doesn’t make sense to allow more market-rate housing in this area.” So this concern is not entirely academic.

Councilmember Andrew Friedson, whose district includes the site and who discussed offering more comprehensive legislation to encourage co-locating housing with county services more broadly, explained well why the perfect can’t be the enemy of the good, saying the amendment is:

“Probably not my preferred method… but we have missed opportunity after opportunity after opportunity after opportunity to do this…I’m still hearing why (other similar past projects) can’t be done, and I just can’t imagine being here 6 years, 7 years, 8 years from now and having the same conversation that my colleagues were having with my predecessor in 2013… I’m willing to try something that isn’t perfect… We gotta do something, we gotta do something different than we are doing right now, cause it isn’t working. ”

That said, it’s also important not to go too far the other way. Despite the protests of many to the contrary, while lower income households do by and large need below market rate housing, market rate housing does help lower housing costs, and middle income families are also feeling the squeeze in this housing crisis. However, opportunities for deeply affordable housing near transit (the Chevy Chase Library sits on multiple bus lines and is less than half a mile from a future purple line stop) are rare, and we should look for any and all tools we can use to make it happen, including giving over county land in exchange.

As councilmember Riemer noted in last week’s meeting, the desire to use housing to offset the costs of the library is valid but is not the most important goal for the project–getting housing on the site is.

I don’t know what the exact right mix will be, no one does. That’s ok. It’s still important to keep up the pressure for the most public good while still being flexible enough to ensure we get something.

Councilmember Nancy Navarro summed it up well, saying: “I just think we need to get real… all of these goals that we all talk about, economic development, vibrancy, making sure we’re competitive, equity, all of those things are predicated on how we understand the major crisis we are facing regarding the lack of additional housing units. It’s very simple.”

This is a moment for a lot of things. Celebration is one. While no solid plans are in place, this vote sends a powerful signal to the county about the council’s intentions for the site. It also prevents the executive from going forward with a project that doesn’t include housing in the meantime.

Gratitude is another. The small, but vocal opposition at the rally, and the largely unsupportive public comments demonstrate that while this vote was unanimous, that doesn’t mean it was it easy.

Responsibility is the final one. Councilmember Jawando explained that he wouldn’t have thought to offer the amendment if not for pressure from the community, saying ”I appreciate the work that’s been happening (in the council) over the last several weeks, but it’s been happening because there has been pressure.”

He’s right. And the entire council deserves both our sincere thanks, and our continued vigilance. This is far from over. Advocates are a major reason this happened. We share responsibility in figuring out what to do with it now.