now that ADU expansion has passed into law how to mitigate past opposition to more ADUs

   When the Montgomery County, Md county council passed a law allowing more accessory dwelling units to be built over the objections of the county executive the news was reported here among other news organizations.


Council Passes Accessory Apartment Zoning Change


This link has died since the original post. 


https://bethesdamagazine.com/bethesda-beat/government/council-passes-accesso=
ry-apartment-zoning-change/


A commenter with a privacy-protecting username 

Kabardino-Balkaria


viewable here

wrote this comment:


There is no "me and Elrich" unless you can cite where he is advocating for what I am calling for: YES on ADUs, with incentives 
to rent them out for under $1500/month. How on earth is this not being for affordable housing.




What I am afraid will happen is the following scenario:
a) a wealthy Chevy Chase family who wants to make even more money builds a high-end, freestanding unit on their property and rents it out for $2200/month, which will be out of range for any middle income young renter who takes transit, but will instead go to the Booz Allen associate who brings his car.
b) An entire family moves in with children and vehicles, making the unit functionally a duplex - which would be all well and good, except for the resulting crowded conditions in schools and on roads (since there is no way to prevent the ADU residents from bringing their cars) and increased impermeable surfaces which lowers the quality of life for both the new residents and the existing residents.





 Did what Kabardino Balkaria call "incentives" mean
rent stabilization Elrich promised in the 2018 primary?   Marc Elrich promised to create a countywide rent stabilization program and dropped the idea after he won the primary. Kabardino Balkaria may be distancing their personal past support for Elrich, at least on part of the affordable housing issue, by leaving out rent control/stabilization and rebranding it as incentives. 

 And Kabardino Balkaria's objections to the now-passed ADU bill leading to more cars in the single family zoned neighborhoods with larger impermeable surface driveways leading to storm runoff (a return to the 'nimby acting like an environmentalist' trope that is partly why building any housing in Montgomery County is so difficult unless it's market-rate housing) can be answered by
requiring driveway expansions to be done with water permeable pavement technology like what is used in parking lot of the Vienna, VA community center.  Reserve a shared car from car2go or zipcar, if one is priced out of car ownership to afford housing costs, and take a weekend drive to the Vienna, Va community center and observe it.  Take a few pictures to share on social media and in one's planning and land use activism with local electeds.  



  Both potential tenants in the examples used by Kabardino Balkaria, the family and the Booz Allen associate, may stop owning cars to pay higher housing costs.
The working class family may not replace their car if it breaks down.

Less parking and traffic will result in either case but more tenant turnover in the ADU will likely result if the tenant's job changes. People are more willing to drive farther to their jobs than take longer bus and rail commutes to their jobs.  Turnover rent increase opacity and one tenant at a time deciding after a visit not to rent is free market rent control without public information on past rents. The affordability problem persists as no public information on what the change in rent at tenant turnover is. The owner-occupied housing market has a sales price record, at least for the last 3 deed changes, in property tax records that are publicly available.

  The pace of progressive change of speeding up bus trips, to increase ridership, with transfers is too slow but for the poorest who cannot afford any other transportation choice, as well as the class descending poor, desperate to save money as COL (cost of living) rises faster than individual incomes and assets. Give up owning a car to spend the savings on housing costs is unpopular to say publicly and directly. Changing land use and transportation policies to limit parking slowly forces the same choice in many people already living without owning cars. 


 The costs of changing infrastructure to support a carless (car-free brand) lifestyle is usually privatized more than socialized.  The only exception is building and operating the bus and rail transit.  Getting the 'last mile' from destinations to bus and rail stops/stations is usually privatized.  That privatization of supporting a car-free (car-less) life shows in the growth of car, bike and e-scooter sharing (renting) services. Ride sharing services lower taxi fares below a living wage to the point that legacy taxi drivers publicly set themselves on fire.  And Montgomery County, MD has started weekday-only on-demand bus service between Wheaton, Glenmont and Rockville WMATA stations because of a free-market failure of not enough uber and lyft drivers getting ride requests to the same areas and drivers consequently not lingering there to enable their driver apps to be matched up by the GPS-locating 'dispatcher.'  "Ride share" drivers have 'red lined' the area as legacy taxi drivers 'red lined' east of the Anacostia River DC.  That lack of taxi service across the Anacostia river created higher fares for the few taxi drivers willing to pick up or drop off passengers 'east of the river' that led to DC's zone fare system (flat fares unless crossing fare zones) that has since been abolished for the distance fare system.