"Steady state' neoliberal budget, affordable housing, transportation and land use policies of Marc Elrich and his 'slate' including Chris Wilhelm and Ukiah Busch will continue the inequities forcing people to move to other counties, like Prince George's County, with greater but dwindling by similar gentrification, supplies of affordable housing units. Being 'priced out' of one jurisdiction one can no longer afford can overlap/intersect with disability that limits employability and income potential. Not retaining residents with disabilities (some of whom may be working with and without LTSS in HCBS settings) belies candidate and elected official claims of being committed to maintaining a diverse community.
Several of the services mentioned are in Washington DC [in the 2007 report with screen captures in a previous post] and may deny MoCo residents access based on non-residency. If a person feels that they are a 'good match' for the services they can move to Washington DC from MoCo, Md and relieve the county government of one resident who may have received more money in services than they paid in local taxes (gentrification at a 'one person at a time' level).
Units weren't produced or retained quickly enough for the needs of the occupying tenant population to wait, at whatever low, but rising 'market rate' they could find.
Two letters from 'back in the day' in 2006 reflect opposition to new housing construction particularly if the units are targeted to 'below median income' earners. Mansionization has continued with little opposition while gentrification of already expensive neighborhoods has worsened.
The Gazette editorial rated the current County Council’s performance as ‘‘disappointing, unfocused, contentious and unsettling,” and said ‘‘the time for a shake-up has arrived.” But then the editors went on to endorse six of the seven current members who are seeking reelection.
Three of the incumbents — Marilyn Praisner, Phil Andrews and Howard Denis — have worked to control taxes, rein in the budget and protect neighborhoods from the negative effects of mansionization and overdevelopment. They deserve to be re-elected.
But we need to elect four new at-large members if residents are to take back control of our county — Hugh Bailey, Marc Elrich, Cary Lamari and Duchy Trachtenberg. Just remember the acronym BELT. We need a new BELT to help restrict the increase in spending and control rapidly rising taxes. We need a new BELT to slow down growth, so that infrastructure can catch up.
Jim Humphrey, Bethesda
The writer is a member of the Executive Committee of Neighbors for a Better Montgomery.
Link below has died
http://www.gazette.net/stories/10162008/prinlet161112_32481.shtml
Below is another copy and paste of content that loaded when I first retrieved it.
The infatuation by Prince George's County government with population growth contributed greatly to the county's budget problems. Sub-prime mortgages were sold to home buyers, mortgage lenders and derivative holders with the promise of exponentially increasing home prices. And the guarantee of always-increasing home prices was based on the expectation of increasing demand for housing which, in turn, is driven by government-assistance population growth.
Maryland and Prince George's County in particular have been especially hard hit by mortgage foreclosures resulting from our county's irresponsible subsidization of population growth. The county is left with the costs of public infrastructure and services associated with this growth but does not have the revenue to support it.
And the current crisis is just the beginning. Prince George's County citizens will be hammered by other costs stemming from continued population growth and overpopulation — fuel shortages, increasing food prices, increasing unemployment, crime and taxes. If Prince George's County wants to fall into complete social bankruptcy, then all it needs to do is continue the insane policies that encourage unending population growth.
Alternatively, if our county is to provide a sustainable, high quality-of-life future for all its citizens, a necessary first step is to immediately end policies that encourage population growth.
Robert Fireovid, Greenbelt, Citizens for a Steady State Economy
It 'takes a while' to notice but long-term (2006-18) MoCo (Montgomery County in 'social media' shorthand) residents paying close attention would notice the gentrification as well as the resident turnover, noted in links below back to 2000, in existing affordable housing. Washington DC, site of some recommended health care providers for low income people by the MoCo Primary Health Coalition, has gentrified too.
And this link goes back to the rent increases, known only to current tenants who pay more or move out leaving their replacement tenant to pay a likely larger rent increase, during the 1995-2001 'dot-com' boom before the 2001-4 recession/depression depending on how much individual wealth one had to replace lost income as a privatization of costs of individual adaptation to changing local, national and global economic interdependence.
Those new residents are paying higher rents than the tenants they replaced with no transparency in rent change at tenant turnover. Owners/landlord management companies save their own costs by rolling most of their maintenance costs into the rent increase at tenant turnover instead of to keep existing tenants at lower, or no, rent increases.
New development and gentrification (supporting retention of affordable housing 'stock' or 'inventory' while ignoring retaining the population living in the existing housing at rising 'price points') are issues beyond Montgomery County, Md and Washington D.C. and Northern Virginia. A look at rising rents in PNW (Pacific Northwest) cities of Seattle and Portland that had been cheaper than large cities in California reflect the same class segregation on the west coast of the USA as the east coast.
Forgetting the retention of the people (population) as Marc Elrich did in his 2006 County Council candidate statement printed in the now-defunct Gazette (copy and paste added in case the link dies),
*Affordable housing. We are in a crisis. We are losing housing faster than we can produce it. Despite the much publicized work-force housing program and the mpdu’s, our rate of production is a fraction of the number of units that are being lost to affordability every year. For example, last September there were about 8000 apartment units on the block for condo conversion, mostly middle-class⁄working class housing, in other words, work-force housing. Those units lost in a single year would take 10 to 20 years to replace under the County’s affordable housing iniatives. The Council boasts that they increased the affordable housing fund by a third, going from $15 to $20 million dollars, but the problem is that apartment buildings that could be purchased for $25,000 a unit a few years ago, now are costing the County $75-125,000 per unit. So the increased funding is not enough to keep pace with increased costs. Add to that sky-rocketing rents — annual increases of from 10 to 28% — and you can see that we are no where near having an affordable housing policy that is up to meeting this crisis.
I will support a greater focus on housing preservation because units can be preserved more cheaply than they can be built, plus the additional price of accepting additional new ‘‘affordable” units has been to grant builders large density bonuses that aggravates our existing transportation and service shortfalls. We need to find ways to build what need without building what we don’t need. I have looked into the use of land-trusts to help address the problem and the judicious use of County-owned land (when it’s in the right place and doesn’t exacerbate other problems) and agree with Cary Lamari, Mike Subin and others who want to explore this. But the way to test an affordable housing policy is not to measure the number of new units built, but to assess the combination of units built to units lost and ask yourself what is the net gain, or loss, at the end of the year. If preservation results in a better number, then our efforts should be focused in that direction.
What’s your plan to provide more affordable housing in Montgomery County?
I tried to outline some of it above. I’d focus on retention on the existing stock as long as preservation is cheaper than production and as long as we’re in a period where the existing supply is rapidly eroding. As I said, it’s not about the number you build, it’s about how many units you have in total at the end of the day. I would look to partner with non-profits as we’ve been successfully doing in Takoma Park.
I favor programs that would help tenants become owners of their units, as long as the County puts resale caps, similar to the MPDU program, so that long-term affordable is maintained while allowing the tenant⁄owners to build equity.
I would favor the County targeting construction of affordable and workforce units and contracting for their design and construction, rather than selling lots to developers at market, giving density bonuses and trying to eek out a few affordable units. If you consider the fact, and it is a fact, that development is costing more than the revenues it generates, all of the housing over and above the affordable units just adds to the strain on the County services budget, the load on the roads and the spaces in our classrooms. It makes long-term sustainability more difficult.
I support partnering with non-profits to help create land-trusts in which ownership of the land is retained by the County or non-profit so that long-term affordable uses of the units can be guaranteed.
I’d support down-payment assistance programs for County employees and look at programs that tie repayment of the that assistance to length of service in the County. It could be a good recruitment tool in an expensive market and could help with long-term retention of our employees.
to focus on the 'housing stock or supply' in the local 'housing market,' rather than the people living in the existing affordable housing that, one turnover or lease term (rent raise) at a time, becomes less affordable has led to gentrification (displacement of poorer people with richer people). Displacement partly shows in continuing jurisdictional median income growth and turnover, in rental and ownership occupancy.
If a candidate wants to be regarded by voters as a progressive, with a D after their name on the ballot, consider three 'modest' proposals.
1. extend county-paid (contractor labor) trash and recycling collection to apartments and condominiums (multifamily housing or common ownership communities) from single-family detached house neighborhoods/sector plan areas instead of passing those costs on to management companies/landlords and common ownership boards. The shifting of those costs will, or should, keep rent and condo fee increases lower.
2. Require apartment buildings built before the mpdu law was passed to offer the same percentage of their units as moderately priced dwelling (MPD) units, whose rents were lower at the time, but have risen by a lower proportion that has become high enough of a net increase over time (40 years since MPDU law passed), as to render older apartment buildings as unaffordable as the Class A 'luxury' apartment buildings built since 2012 after zoning changes, with planning board and council permissions, despite whines of 'developers buying candidates and paving over MoCo.' 2018 and beyond MoCo local and Md General Assembly candidates could be even more progressive and expand the percentages beyond 15% as well as addressing a gap between income eligibility for MPDU programs and 'market rate' affordability that leads to working class population displacement by upper middle class populations. Raise the maximum incomes for eligibility a larger amount or reinstate the 'workforce housing' program cancelled by 2008, with a phase in period like minimum wage increases, to 'catch up' and reduce the eligibility-market rate affordability gap.
Back to the original 2006 council candidate statement by newly term-limited (as of Nov 2016 ballot initiative rooted in property tax whining by people who could afford, unless they were long-term owners who still have equity to borrow prudently against, the hyper-gentrified housing costs to buy their homes in the first place) 3 term council member and 2018 MoCo executive candidate Marc Elrich for 'modest' proposal number 3 to stop the re-branding of opposition to specific housing and infrastructure projects into 'good government' advocacy by collectively accepting a vision of a community that extends beyond the built and natural environments one sees every day (neighborhood/sector plan area) to the wider community (county, state and country) one 'calls home.'
Democrat
Candidate name: Marc Elrich
Place of residence: Takoma Park
Community associations, involvement: Founder and former president, Between the Creeks Neighborhood Association.; former regional vice president, Maryland Low-Income Housing Coalition; past vice president, Silver Spring-Takoma Park Traffic Coalition; past member, CURB (group to repeal Pay and Go); Silver Spring Sector Plan Citizens Advisory Committee; Silver Spring Redevelopment Citizens Advisory Committee; Transportation Policy Review Task Force; member of NARAL, NOW, NAACP, Sierra Club, Progressive Maryland
3. The past repeal of 'Pay and Go' won by civic/community organizations like CURB that Marc Elrich cited his involvement in made the choice to demand scrapping the assessment of additional fees paid by the demonized 'developers' (new housing builders) to support infrastructure construction to support the 'growth' (new housing and residents). The choice of those involved in CURB, including Marc Elrich, to demand raising the fees was a 'road not taken.'
Perhaps CURB, including Marc Elrich, wanted to both stop new housing construction 'development' and stop new infrastructure capacity improvements, for anyone but current county residents and a marginal few always richer new residents as housing tenancy and ownership 'turns over,' as a two-track advocacy strategy. To avoid and deny being called out as 'nimbys' CURB and other civic activist groups engaged on civic process issues like campaign donor influence, capping the rate of property tax increases and term limits to falsely equate not getting what they wanted (new housing and 'excessive' capacity infrastructure being stopped) with not being 'heard' in a 'fair' land use process.
Other 'civic' groups have switched issues from stopping a 'development' (housing construction) project to 'civic process issues' of campaign donor influence to falsely equate 'not getting the outcome wanted' with 'not being heard fairly.' Montgomerycivic.org (2004 support of no at-large council seats whose rationale was undermined by 2016 when Prince George's County created two at large seats), neighbors for a better montgomery, neighborhood montgomery, Save 10 Mile Creek (from a Premium Outlets outlet mall), MoCo Voters and Save Westbard, Save 7 Locks School (from a larger school and reuse of an old site for moderately priced housing), Chevy Chase Town and Wayne avenue residents opposition to the Purple Line, supporters of 'bus rapid transit' over light rail for the Corridor Cities Transitway and Save Nick's (Maravell) Organic Farm (from reuse as a sports field after the Germantown Soccerplex raised its league fees too high for parents to afford the per-child registration costs) are examples of how specific 'development' opponents re-brand themselves as advocates of 'open and accountable government.'
All movements listed in the above paragraph falsely equate not getting what they want in advocacy with not 'being heard' or 'listened to' and impugn motives of council members and 'unresponsive' staff based on who electeds take money from to pay to get their election campaign speech distributed. 'Civic' or 'community-based, people-powered' groups in the examples listed above are almost as bad as the much-maligned 'developers' because their 'special interest' is preserving big resale or rental (and now airbNb vacation house rentals) profits perpetuating segregation by economic, and civil rights law protected, classes that overlap/are intersectional with economic (wealth and income) class.
If fees had been raised, as they were after the 'pay and go' program was repealed in the changes made after the 2006 Clarksburg oversight 'fall-out' maybe some new 'development' (housing) may not have been built in MoCo and the county could have gotten a 'bad' reputation for a 'bad business climate.' The ranking of local jurisdictions and states for good and bad business climates is a Republican and neoliberal, corporate Democratic, 'meme.'
Tax Foundation data gathering that 'business climate' ratings are based on should be questioned based on who praises them on their online fundraising page:
The 'blurb' about 'Tax Freedom Day' (a per diem calculation of how much income pays income taxes before an individual has 'discretionary' control of the remainder) is from former Rep Dick Armey (R-TX), who under far-right Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) was a predecessor of 2017 Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy under a similarly far-right Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI).
Corporations, which love to brag with PR and advertising about how ethical they are, would have shown by their actions a willingness to accept lower profits by paying the higher developer impact fees, and wait for construction to start per new 'staging' regulations and not pass them on as higher sale prices and rents.
