New townhouses in Hyattsville. Photo by Mr. T in DC licensed under Creative Commons, and cropped by the author.

This week, Prince George’s County will hear from residents about whether it should ban new townhouses for the next two years. We think this is a bad idea, and we’re not alone. Here’s how you can get involved.

The County Council is looking at three bills, all related to townhouses. One bill, CB-52-2023, would block approvals for new townhouse developments except in a handful of areas. Two other bills, CB-50-2023 and CB-53-2023, are meant to block proposals to build townhouses in specific locations. Council Vice Chair Wala Blegay, who’s cosponsoring the three bills with Council Chair Tom Dernoga, says the three bills will prevent suburban sprawl and encourage development near the Blue Line instead.

Ahead of a public hearing tomorrow, Blegay distributed a list of places where the bill “will not affect townhome development.” The list includes all of the county’s Metro stations and a handful of commercial areas like the Gateway Arts District along Route 1, as well as places where townhomes are unlikely to be built, like the University of Maryland.

In their analysis of the bill, staff at the Prince George’s County Planning Department say that the way CB-52-2023 was written, it’s not clear where Dernoga and Blegay want to ban townhouses, because it uses words like “Townhouse-related residential use” that don’t mean anything, and references “Designated Transit-Oriented or Revitalization areas” that don’t describe a specific place. In turn, staff produced these maps attempting to interpret the bill, which shows areas where townhouses would still be allowed in white. It leaves most of the county–including communities inside the Capital Beltway that are decidedly not sprawl–off-limits to townhouses.

These maps show where townhouses would be banned in northern, central, and southern Prince George's County. Image by M-NCPPC.

“A step backwards”

In April, the Planning Board voted to oppose CB-52-2023, saying “there is no clear rationale for singling out townhouses,” calling them a “beneficial type of development.” They didn’t take a position on the other two bills, but did express “numerous concerns” about them.

Other county elected officials have come out against the bills, focusing on the need for new housing to grow the tax base and attract more businesses and retailers to the county. In her newsletter, County Executive Angela Alsobrooks called townhouses “the entry point for homeownership for young people and people of color,” and described the bill as “a step backwards on how other jurisdictions across the nation are dealing with the issue of housing.”

Councilmember Sydney Harrison, who represents communities in southern Prince George’s County, emphasized that townhouses are a desirable housing option, pushing back on perceptions from some county residents that they’re low-quality. He told WTOP, “We as a jurisdiction have an obligation and a responsibility that we create the affordable housing options and housing opportunities for all.”

Last year, Prince George’s County was second only to DC in housing production, permitting over 5,900 new homes–a substantial chunk of the 35,000 homes it needs to build in the next 20 years to accommodate its growing population. It would be unfortunate if the county’s progress in addressing our regional housing shortage were cut short.

What can we do about it?

Below is our testimony on CB-52-2023, aka the townhouse ban. Tomorrow, the County Council’s Planning, Housing, and Economic Development committee will hold a public hearing on CB-52-2023. Here’s where you can send written testimony or sign up to testify in person at the Wayne Curry Administration Building in Largo, where the County Council meets.

Dear Council Chair Dernoga and members of the Prince George’s County Council:

My name is Dan Reed and I serve as the Regional Policy Director for Greater Greater Washington, a nonprofit that works to advance racial, economic, and environmental justice in land use, transportation, and housing throughout Greater Washington. As an organization that works to both reduce suburban sprawl and make sure our region has an adequate supply of housing, we strongly oppose Bill CB-050-2023, which along with Bill CB-052-2023 are colloquially known as the “townhouse ban.”

As written, these bills would ban permits for new townhouses in a vast swath of Prince George’s County, with the exception of Local Centers, Corridors, and Regional Transit Districts. They have been described as tools for combating sprawl, which is a laudable goal. However, these bills would prevent townhomes from being built in most of the County’s established neighborhoods, including inside-the-Beltway communities which are exactly where new investment should go. The lines drawn by this bill between areas where townhouses can or cannot be built are arbitrary. To give just one example, this bill would have prevented the approval of Capital Court, a recently completed townhouse development less than a mile from the Downtown Largo Metro station, because it is across Central Avenue from the Largo Regional Transit District. If passed, this bill risks exacerbating sprawl, not reducing it. It would likely push development further out into surrounding counties and place greater burdens on County infrastructure as people commute in from outlying areas.

We have a national, regional, and local housing shortage, and this bill will only make it worse. According to the Urban Institute, Prince George’s County needs 35,000 new homes in the next 20 years to accommodate its share of the DC area’s growing population. Home prices in the county have risen dramatically over the past four years, and some zip codes have seen double-digit increases. Not only are people at risk of being priced out of Prince George’s County, but as the 2021 Comprehensive Housing Strategy notes, people are choosing not to stay or move here due to a lack of diverse housing options–including townhomes. It would be a missed opportunity for Prince George’s County to push out working families who want to build lives and careers here by disallowing a specific type of home that is both affordable and in demand.

For these reasons and others, both the Planning Board and the County Executive oppose these bills. We urge the County Council to vote against Bill CB-50-2023 and Bill CB-52-2023, and hope to work with you to find real housing solutions that accommodate our region’s growing, diverse population while protecting our environment and supporting the local economy. Thank you for your time.