 Wednesday, July 24, 2024
Montgomery County is facing a serious shortage of affordable housing, and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments estimates that we need to add 41,000 housing units in the next ten years to meeting housing demands. In response to this shortage, the Montgomery County Planning Board recently released Attainable Housing Strategies (AHS), a plan that will give property owners the flexibility to build different types of housing if they choose to.
After years of conversations with the community, stakeholders, and other county agencies, planners have recommended a set of zoning modifications that would allow for structures such as duplexes, triplexes, townhouses, small apartment buildings, and other types of middle housing to be built within single-family zoned areas in the county.
Recommendations from the Planning Board are NOT mandates that new and different housing types must be built in existing neighborhoods. The plan is still in the discussion phase and no immediate changes are being made in any neighborhood.
Attainable Housing Strategies is a solution to the housing crisis we are facing nationally and locally, and will help create more housing along the county's growth corridors as defined in our latest master plan - Thrive Montgomery 2050.
I understand that there are lots of questions and concerns about this plan. To help everyone understand this policy, I will be sending several newsletters throughout the summer focused entirely on Attainable Housing Strategies.
The Planning, Housing, and Parks (PHP) committee held three work sessions about Attainable Housing Strategies, and will be moving the conversation to the full Council in the coming weeks. Attainable Housing Strategies includes recommendations for a range of types and scales, which were discussed at respective committee sessions.
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Briefing about the Attainable Housing Strategies, June 18th
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Small-scale and Medium-scale Recommendations, July 8th
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Large-scale and Other Recommendations, July 22nd
A full Council session about Attainable Housing Strategies has not yet been scheduled. I will keep you posted as the plan moves through the legislative process. This is the first step in the process, and the Council will be hosting a series of listening sessions in the fall to gather more feedback from constituents. I will keep you posted about these listening sessions.
In the meantime, please review following helpful resources put together by Montgomery Planning:
 A graphic explaining the small-scale, medium-scale, and large-scale recommendations from the AHS.
If you have any questions about this plan, or would like to share your thoughts and concerns, please feel free to contact me directly at councilmember.balcombe@montgomerycountymd.gov or 240-777-7960. Your feedback is critical, especially regarding this plan.
If you would like to get in touch with me regarding anything mentioned in this newsletter or any other concerns you may have, please email me at Councilmember.Balcombe@montgomerycountymd.gov or call my office at 240-777-7960.
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