Montgomery County - What Happened?
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Anonymous
| Why would I care about this? Montgomery County is a nice place to live. I'd rather live here than Northern Virginia. Some people disagree and they live where they want to live. |
Anonymous
Yep. NOVA built up — and built convenient neighborhoods for the well-paid military contractors, and retail adapted to accommodate them. Check back in 40 or 50 years to see if it ages well. I’m guessing that it will — but the current Fed changes will have a huge impact, especially on Montgomery County, which tended to have the scientists and health care professionals who worked at NIH and Walter Reed. tldr: People tend to live near their jobs — when they can afford to do so. Looks like war is more lucrative than health. |
Anonymous
It could be related to the mandatory MPDU’s which I think are a great thing. I love that we have a more inclusive and diverse community. Again, I literally never see anyone from MoCo on here talking about NoVa like this. It’s so weird the people in Virginia have such an inferiority complex. Montgomery county is an amazing place to live. |
Anonymous
By this logic, you would welcome it slipping to 200, correct? |
Anonymous
DP. That doesn't follow at all. Did you learn to debate by watching Charlie Kirk YouTube videos? |
Anonymous
| This thread is missing the point comparing moco to nova and talking about the county becoming “poor”. The issue is the local government is obsessed with spending large amounts of tax money on performative virtue signaling catered parties than figuring out a strategy to lower taxes and increase business formation in the county. This will lead to lower growth, higher and higher property tax increases, a decline or stagnation in overall population, and a decline in high net worth families remaining in the county due to burdensome tax obligations. I.e basically exactly what has happened to Baltimore city. This has nothing to do with race or whatever other partisan crap people want to throw around - it’s about inept leadership. If my neighbors in moco are fine with that - great - but the area will suffer and decline over time unless changes are made |
Anonymous
Can you imagine welcoming America’s decline from #1 to #20 in median family income related to the rest of the world because now it made the country more affordable?! There’s a reason it’s more affordable. There are less businesses, less jobs, and less public and private investment relative to the other counties nearby that have take the lead. Less business investment and household income means less tax revenue, which means less public services, less money for schools, less money for the social safety net. How anyone can argue that this something to celebrate is truly bizarre. Can you imagine people in DC arguing that DC was better in the 1980s because was more affordable? This is the exact same mind state at work with some of these posters. |
Anonymous
This x 100,000%! The officials in DC, PG and NoVa all care about business development because they know you can’t run a competent government based on income and property taxes alone. These are not MAGA politicians, just people who aren’t completely inept like MoCo’s leadership. The fact that people are making people who want more business investment in the county and more competent leadership out to be MAGA shows how truly crazy and deluded they are. I just want the leadership that PG, DC, and NoVa have. |
Anonymous
Baltimore is a rust belt city which was a huge manufacturing center and lost jobs and population for the same reasons as Detroit and Buffalo did. It has absolutely nothing to do with Montgomery County. |
Anonymous
DP. I don’t pick where I live or work or go to school solely based on someone else’s lists and priorities. I’ve done quite well using my own criteria and priorities. |
Anonymous
Charlie Kirk?! I would take Muriel Bowser, Angela Alsobrooks, and even Rushern Baker over Marc Elrich and most everyone else on the inept MoCo Council. I’m not MAGA, I’m anti aloof, inept BAMMA. |
Anonymous
| Counties are too large a unit of measurement to declare “nice” or not. Some parts are great and always have been, other parts are much more socioeconomically diverse than they once were , and many of the affluent families who might have lived in those neighborhoods in the 80s and 90s instead live in Howard, Calvert, or the Nova counties. Ask yourself whether you think that’s a good or a bad thing. 🤷♂️ |
Anonymous
I see this talking point time and time again on here — “anyone who comments on MoCo’s problems is a jealous NoVa poster!!!!” Nice try, but I enjoy the topic and don’t even live in MoCo or NoVA — I live in NW. Some people genuinely enjoy topics such as demographics, economics, real estate development, etc. To me, the fall off of MoCo is fascinating and should be studied. If you don’t like it, simply ignore these threads versus post idiotic comments that add nothing of value and essentially amount to petty bickering and personal attacks. |
Anonymous
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Two things happened.
The first and most important thing is that Montgomery County started losing private sector jobs, some of them directly to Virginia. The reasons for this are many, but they include Maryland’s corporate taxes, Montgomery County’s energy tax, and Montgomery County’s refusal to build more roads. People who can afford to do so generally prefer to live closer to work than further away, which is why people who live in Montgomery County schlep across the bridge every morning while their bosses roll in from their single family homes in Fairfax. The second is that developers stopped building single family houses in Montgomery County. People with the means to do so generally prefer owning. The county council has incentivized rental apartments and disincentivized single family homes, so a lot of people who work in Montgomery County moved to Fredrick so they could buy a single family home. The county council likes to pretend that building apartments grows the county’s economy and tax base, but developers aren’t eager to build in Montgomery County because the shrinking private sector employment base makes building risky. So now the council pays developers to build housing, and the county has to figure out a way to pay for services for people whose landlords aren’t paying property taxes. |
Anonymous
+1 and I’d add that they push most of the rental units and affordable housing into a few parts of the county. Because of that, you have a very complacent elite that doesn’t really care so much about the rest of moco as long as their parts are protected (think the W school district areas especially). The best and brightest aren’t running for Council. |