More tangible action to house homeless than to prevent displacement and homelessness

    The goal of 55% of trips in the Bethesda Downtown Plan borders being taken by Metro, bicycle,  or some form of shared (no use of term “common carrier”) transportation by the time built development hits 30.4 million square feet


 County Council members on Tuesday stripped staging out of the downtown Bethesda growth plan, producing a version that all but one of them could get behind.
A council committee and staff recommended halting development at 30.4 million square feet, which would allow about 2.2 million square feet beyond what is currently standing and approved in Bethesda. To build the rest of the 4.2 million square feet permitted under the plan, Bethesda would have to meet certain targets for reduced reliance on single-occupant cars.
But the full council scrapped this two-step process. Instead, members opted to set goals for Bethesda commuting patterns, require transportation officials to come up with a strategy for achieving them and institute progress checks.
“There’s a difference between a red light and a flashing yellow. This is a flashing yellow,” council President Roger Berliner said.
Under the revised plan’s goals, at least 55 percent of Bethesda commuters would be traveling by bicycle, Metro or some other form of shared transportation by the time development hits the 30.4 million-square-foot benchmark. If this target isn’t achieved, council members would have the option to halt growth without reconsidering the entire Bethesda Downtown Sector Plan, Berliner said. However, the development freeze wouldn’t happen automatically.
Council members supported this version of the sector plan, a two-decade growth vision, by a straw vote of 8-1, with only council member Marc Elrich in opposition. Elrich said he couldn’t back a proposal that lacked staging. The council likely will vote on a final plan in coming weeks.
The Coalition of Bethesda Area Residents and other community groups have also favored phasing development to prevent growth from overwhelming infrastructure, such as schools and roads.
But county planners have argued the sector plan is so modest in scale that including stages could trigger a development freeze without any significant headway on transportation goals. The proposed Marriott headquarters project alone will consume an estimated 400,000 square feet of the additional 4.2 million square feet allowed by the plan, according to county staff reports.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the council made a number of other plan changes, such as:
    •    reducing the height cap for Chevy Chase Acura dealership site (7725 Wisconsin Ave.) from 200 to 145 feet;
    •    lowering the height cap for the Saul property (8001 Wisconsin Ave.) from 120 to 90 feet;
    •    limiting to 90 feet heights for a row of properties east of Wisconsin Avenue and north of Cheltenham Drive; and
    •    limiting to 70 feet heights for 4715 Chestnut Street, 4719 Chestnut Street and 8321 Wisconsin Ave.
Berliner said he’s pleased with the balance that council members have achieved between stimulating growth that will create parks and affordable housing and respecting the community’s wishes to focus high-rise projects away from neighborhoods.
“I feel like the people that live there today are getting public amenities that they desire, and I think we’re creating a more vibrant Bethesda that is really going to be a great boon for our county and our residents,” he said.






 with an option of a development freeze (used to be called a ‘building moratorium’) will be reached by enough new residents shifting car ownership costs to higher housing costs and subscription car and bicycle rental (not car and bike ‘sharing’) monthly bills for ‘access’ instead of ownership of a car or a bicycle.



   Affordable housing will only be provided for those who can afford to keep living (wait list eligibility criterion of residence) in Montgomery County, MD for 5-10 years at problematically rising ‘market’ rates. 

   Permitting the construction of ’as few new units as possible in all sector plan areas to plausibly deny the nimby position’ is the basis for the current and foreseeable future affordable housing policy.  The policy has been implemented only for housing formerly homeless people such as Cordell Place.


 [dead link by Dec 8, 2017]
 http://admin.infomontgomery.org/query/programs.aspx?PrgID=1453


 [what formerly loaded in 2016 when content originally retrieved]


Montgomery County Coalition For The Homeless
Other Programs:  Cordell Place;   Creative Housing Initiative Pilot Program;   Home Builders Care Assessment Center;  Home Builders Care Assessment Center -Winter Shelter;  Home First;   Hope Housing;   Partnership For Permanent Housing;   Safe Havens;   Seneca Heights Apartments;
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
Cordell Place is MCCH’s newest housing program, providing permanent supportive housing to formerly homeless individuals in an apartment building in downtown Bethesda.
http://www.mcch.net


SERVICE(S)
Homeless Permanent Supportive Housing

POPULATION
SERVED
Adults

Subsidized Rental Housing Residents

Previously Homeless People

Ages: 18-100
Language Available: English; Korean; Spanish
INTAKE &
ELIGIBILITY
Eligibility Requirements: Must be referred from within the homeless system. Single homeless adult men and women who are able to live independently but have need of on site supportive services. Some of the population must be chronically homeless. Must have some income below 40% AMI.
Required Intake Process: Referral Required
FEES
Amount:$150.00
Payment Description: secuity deposit and 30% of income for rent
Payment Option: ; Other: 30% of income for rent
AREA(S) SERVED
All County


DELIVERY SITE(S)
Cordell Place
4715 Cordell Ave
Bethesda, MD, 20814
  
Months of Services:
Year Round
  
Hours of Services:
24 Hours/ 7 Days
CONTACT(S)
Information Number
main number
301-217-0314
mcch@mcch.net
ANNOUNCEMENT

UPDATED
08/03/2015
 





Cordell Place was an office to apartment building conversion built between 2009 and 2012 that was donated to Montgomery County, with operation outsourced to the Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless, as an offsite ‘amenity to allow building somewhere else,’ with continuing inadequate supply of below median income units to meet demand, in the Woodmont Triangle or Bethesda Downtown sector planning area.  


  As of 2007 

According to the HOC, more than 20,000 households are on the county’s waiting list for some type of low-income public housing.

people representing 20,000 households were on the waiting list.  The waiting list 'growth' may have only been managed by attrition that occurs every time a person moves out of Montgomery County to another county while in many cases continues to work in Montgomery County.  


   The change in the percentage of county employees living within the county they work for, as a representative sample of working to upper middle class income-earning workers


 ‘‘Our work force lives in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and the outskirts of Maryland,” said Council President Michael J. Knapp (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown, who agrees with Leggett’s proposal. ‘‘Now is the time to take action. All of our work force should live here.”
Of the 8,689 full-time workers employed by the county government, 43 percent live outside the county, said Donna Bigler, a county spokeswoman.


with cognizance of retirements and resignations illustrates the affordability, or lack thereof, of the Montgomery County, Md 'housing market.'

   Congestion on I-270 and local roads (by people unwilling or unable to pay the tolls on Md route 200 (ICC) as well as route 29 that created enough acknowledged demand to build the 'political will' for 'bus rapid transit' by 2021 while still not doing any more in the Viers Mill Road (route 586) corridor than breaking up the metrobus Q2 route by skipping stops along various routes now labelled Q1-6, is a sign of the displacement to other jurisdictions as a result of inadequate class integration of all Montgomery County neighborhoods/subdivisions/master and sector plan areas.  Population growth in Frederick, Howard and Anne Arundel Counties as well as Baltimore City and County demonstrate the working and middle class displacement from Montgomery County.  Montgomery County median income increases also show the working and middle class displacement.  


   Further illustrating the displacement of working and middle class residents from Bethesda was the case of an affordable housing preservation ‘battle’ on Battery Lane 



 Members of Council will undoubtedly approve the new policy, and will likely use the vote as an opportunity to once again exhort the great need for affordable housing. Butt on September 25 the Council approved rezoning of property on Battery Lane in Bethesda on which 240 affordably priced garden apartments now exist, which will be replaced with 700 new apartments under the rezoning, 105 of which will be affordable under the county's Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit program.
So on the one hand Council members will encourage the preservation of existing affordable dwellings in the new Housing Policy, yet they recently voted to reduce the number of affordable apartments from 240 to 105 on one street in Bethesda.







was lost, long term, as every time someone moves out the replacement tenant pays an opaque rent increase for same unit.  

  When people buy housing they can look up property ownership and tax records to learn what a house has sold for over time.  Apartment-hunters have no way of knowing what rent the tenant who moved out (creating the vacancy) paid to measure the rent inflation at unit turnover.  Individual decisions to 'take it or leave it' don't restrain the rent inflation at tenant turnover to provide adequate numbers of affordable rental units in the 'free market' without some type of rent stabilization if not control perhaps making exceeding the recommended rent increase guidelines (based on CPI changes) subject to as much means-testing for landlords as tenants must satisfy for eligibility for HOC (local public housing authority) programs. 


   Apartment building owners roll most of their maintenance costs into turnover maintenance not to retain existing tenants at lower rent increases at each lease renewal.  Buildings aren’t torn down with mass displacement the same buildings become more expensive each time someone moves out rather than accepting a rent increase to stay.  Displacement still happens each time someone moves out but it’s on a smaller scale that no one notices until after too long a time period to resist. The only response by the County Executive and Council is the start of a landlord-tenant mediation program, publicized with billboards on Montgomery County Ride On buses marketed with the slogan "Renters Have Rights" to attempt to resolve maintenance disputes without a tenant simply choosing the 'free market' option of moving out allowing the landlord to continue the provision of most maintenance after tenant turnover with the costs paid by new tenants paying regressively higher rents over time.  

   The original total of 240 'affordable' apartments became regressively less affordable each time one unit 'turns over' by a tenant moving out rather than paying more rent that has risen from about $975/month in 2000 to $1575 by 2016 with new tenants paying as much as $1680 for similarly sized one bedroom units (figures based on experience of author of this post whose identity not wished to be public).  The difference in rent between continuing tenant $1575 and new tenant $1680 shows the inclusion of more maintenance costs to attract new higher income tenants rather than to retain existing tenants.   The expected requirement of 105 MPD (moderately priced dwelling) units is grossly inadequate based on the HOC waiting list figure of 20,000 in 2007 and whatever the figure has changed to (probably about 20,000) by 2017.  The legal change requiring 15% of new Bethesda Downtown master plan area apartments and condos to be MPD units, instead of the historic 12.5% shows the resistance to inclusionary zoning that still exists since 1975 when the law was passed.