MOCO - County Wide Upzoning, Everywhere

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. I would say overburdened infrastructure (roads, parks, other county government facilities) rather than crumbling. Obviously existing residents need to foot the bill to get that back to healthy but we can’t keep falling further behind, so developers will need to foot the bill for their growth. If that means they have to settle for less profit, then so be it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing massive corporate profits.

What is your basis for saying that county roads, parks, and other county government facilities are overburdened?

OK.

Schools: Many of them are chronically overcrowded and have temporary classrooms, according to MCPS guidelines. Planning adopted a higher threshold for classifying a school as overcrowded, and even by that measure a number of schools are overcrowded.

Roads: I don’t think this needs explaining, but look at the Beltway or 270 at rush hour if you need more data.

Parks: Fields are booked wall to wall and some leagues can’t get the slots they need to meet demand in their programs. Because they’re used so much, a lot of the fields are bare, compacted dirt that is as hard as concrete.

And so on. The county did not scale infrastructure or services along with growth such that growth has caused the quality of life to deteriorate. It’s hard to be that incompetent, but that’s planning and the county council for you.

Needing someone to explain this to you makes YIMBYs look utterly clueless and hurts your credibility.

+100

Watch the YIMBY PP simply ignore this. Like a good cult member

People need to fight back before it is too late. This policy will destroy everything that made MOCO a desirable place to live. There will be nothing left to defend if people don't stand up to prevent ideological crazies.

Northern Virginia also has a penchant for hiring incompetent lunatics from the MOCO planning department, so this fight will be coming to the NOVA suburbs soon.

For example, Alexandria and Arlington?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. I would say overburdened infrastructure (roads, parks, other county government facilities) rather than crumbling. Obviously existing residents need to foot the bill to get that back to healthy but we can’t keep falling further behind, so developers will need to foot the bill for their growth. If that means they have to settle for less profit, then so be it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing massive corporate profits.

What is your basis for saying that county roads, parks, and other county government facilities are overburdened?

OK.

Schools: Many of them are chronically overcrowded and have temporary classrooms, according to MCPS guidelines. Planning adopted a higher threshold for classifying a school as overcrowded, and even by that measure a number of schools are overcrowded.

Roads: I don’t think this needs explaining, but look at the Beltway or 270 at rush hour if you need more data.

Parks: Fields are booked wall to wall and some leagues can’t get the slots they need to meet demand in their programs. Because they’re used so much, a lot of the fields are bare, compacted dirt that is as hard as concrete.

And so on. The county did not scale infrastructure or services along with growth such that growth has caused the quality of life to deteriorate. It’s hard to be that incompetent, but that’s planning and the county council for you.

Needing someone to explain this to you makes YIMBYs look utterly clueless and hurts your credibility.

+100

Watch the YIMBY PP simply ignore this. Like a good cult member

People need to fight back before it is too late. This policy will destroy everything that made MOCO a desirable place to live. There will be nothing left to defend if people don't stand up to prevent ideological crazies.

Have you considered the possibility that this is actually something people want? The reason people aren't fighting back is because this is actually something people want?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. I would say overburdened infrastructure (roads, parks, other county government facilities) rather than crumbling. Obviously existing residents need to foot the bill to get that back to healthy but we can’t keep falling further behind, so developers will need to foot the bill for their growth. If that means they have to settle for less profit, then so be it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing massive corporate profits.

What is your basis for saying that county roads, parks, and other county government facilities are overburdened?

OK.

Schools: Many of them are chronically overcrowded and have temporary classrooms, according to MCPS guidelines. Planning adopted a higher threshold for classifying a school as overcrowded, and even by that measure a number of schools are overcrowded.

Roads: I don’t think this needs explaining, but look at the Beltway or 270 at rush hour if you need more data.

Parks: Fields are booked wall to wall and some leagues can’t get the slots they need to meet demand in their programs. Because they’re used so much, a lot of the fields are bare, compacted dirt that is as hard as concrete.

And so on. The county did not scale infrastructure or services along with growth such that growth has caused the quality of life to deteriorate. It’s hard to be that incompetent, but that’s planning and the county council for you.

Needing someone to explain this to you makes YIMBYs look utterly clueless and hurts your credibility.

Got it. You don't mean the roads are overburdened, you mean there are a lot of cars on the road during rush hour. Yes, there are, that's true. Fortunately, the county is investing in lots of different actions to help people get where they're going without having to be in a car on a road at the same time as lots of other cars are on the road, including sidewalks and bike lanes, buses, Metro, the Purple Line, more housing, and denser housing.

It is true that the county has a big financial burden from just maintaining the current roads (pavement, snow removal, street lights, traffic signals, mowing/vegetation control, stormwater, bridge and culvert replacement, sidewalk retrofits, etc.), not to mention the additional costs of the roads (emergency response, police traffic enforcement, etc.), but that's actually an argument against more roads.

Yes, we know you want to NIMBY the roads that would actually enable more housing, though in areas where you don’t want more housing. It’s not just rush hour. It’s the middle of the day, weekends, and holidays too. And, sure, planning gives lip service to getting cars off the road, but it also consistently approves car-oriented development close to premium transit, so they’re not really committed to getting less cars off the road. It’s just a nice thing to put in master plans.

Now do schools (which are much more important than roads and which also think are fine).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. I would say overburdened infrastructure (roads, parks, other county government facilities) rather than crumbling. Obviously existing residents need to foot the bill to get that back to healthy but we can’t keep falling further behind, so developers will need to foot the bill for their growth. If that means they have to settle for less profit, then so be it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing massive corporate profits.

What is your basis for saying that county roads, parks, and other county government facilities are overburdened?

OK.

Schools: Many of them are chronically overcrowded and have temporary classrooms, according to MCPS guidelines. Planning adopted a higher threshold for classifying a school as overcrowded, and even by that measure a number of schools are overcrowded.

Roads: I don’t think this needs explaining, but look at the Beltway or 270 at rush hour if you need more data.

Parks: Fields are booked wall to wall and some leagues can’t get the slots they need to meet demand in their programs. Because they’re used so much, a lot of the fields are bare, compacted dirt that is as hard as concrete.

And so on. The county did not scale infrastructure or services along with growth such that growth has caused the quality of life to deteriorate. It’s hard to be that incompetent, but that’s planning and the county council for you.

Needing someone to explain this to you makes YIMBYs look utterly clueless and hurts your credibility.

Got it. You don't mean the roads are overburdened, you mean there are a lot of cars on the road during rush hour. Yes, there are, that's true. Fortunately, the county is investing in lots of different actions to help people get where they're going without having to be in a car on a road at the same time as lots of other cars are on the road, including sidewalks and bike lanes, buses, Metro, the Purple Line, more housing, and denser housing.

It is true that the county has a big financial burden from just maintaining the current roads (pavement, snow removal, street lights, traffic signals, mowing/vegetation control, stormwater, bridge and culvert replacement, sidewalk retrofits, etc.), not to mention the additional costs of the roads (emergency response, police traffic enforcement, etc.), but that's actually an argument against more roads.

Yes, we know you want to NIMBY the roads that would actually enable more housing, though in areas where you don’t want more housing. It’s not just rush hour. It’s the middle of the day, weekends, and holidays too. And, sure, planning gives lip service to getting cars off the road, but it also consistently approves car-oriented development close to premium transit, so they’re not really committed to getting less cars off the road. It’s just a nice thing to put in master plans.

Now do schools (which are much more important than roads and which also think are fine).

I guess that's somebody's new strategy - to say "NIMBY!" to the people who think we need to stop building new/wider roads to "fix" traffic because it doesn't actually fix traffic. Well, if you want to do that, then go right ahead, I guess. I feel like your time would be more effectively spent advocating at Planning for TOD that actually is TOD, but it's your time and your decision what to do with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. I would say overburdened infrastructure (roads, parks, other county government facilities) rather than crumbling. Obviously existing residents need to foot the bill to get that back to healthy but we can’t keep falling further behind, so developers will need to foot the bill for their growth. If that means they have to settle for less profit, then so be it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing massive corporate profits.

What is your basis for saying that county roads, parks, and other county government facilities are overburdened?

OK.

Schools: Many of them are chronically overcrowded and have temporary classrooms, according to MCPS guidelines. Planning adopted a higher threshold for classifying a school as overcrowded, and even by that measure a number of schools are overcrowded.

Roads: I don’t think this needs explaining, but look at the Beltway or 270 at rush hour if you need more data.

Parks: Fields are booked wall to wall and some leagues can’t get the slots they need to meet demand in their programs. Because they’re used so much, a lot of the fields are bare, compacted dirt that is as hard as concrete.

And so on. The county did not scale infrastructure or services along with growth such that growth has caused the quality of life to deteriorate. It’s hard to be that incompetent, but that’s planning and the county council for you.

Needing someone to explain this to you makes YIMBYs look utterly clueless and hurts your credibility.

Got it. You don't mean the roads are overburdened, you mean there are a lot of cars on the road during rush hour. Yes, there are, that's true. Fortunately, the county is investing in lots of different actions to help people get where they're going without having to be in a car on a road at the same time as lots of other cars are on the road, including sidewalks and bike lanes, buses, Metro, the Purple Line, more housing, and denser housing.

It is true that the county has a big financial burden from just maintaining the current roads (pavement, snow removal, street lights, traffic signals, mowing/vegetation control, stormwater, bridge and culvert replacement, sidewalk retrofits, etc.), not to mention the additional costs of the roads (emergency response, police traffic enforcement, etc.), but that's actually an argument against more roads.

Yes, we know you want to NIMBY the roads that would actually enable more housing, though in areas where you don’t want more housing. It’s not just rush hour. It’s the middle of the day, weekends, and holidays too. And, sure, planning gives lip service to getting cars off the road, but it also consistently approves car-oriented development close to premium transit, so they’re not really committed to getting less cars off the road. It’s just a nice thing to put in master plans.

Now do schools (which are much more important than roads and which also think are fine).

I guess that's somebody's new strategy - to say "NIMBY!" to the people who think we need to stop building new/wider roads to "fix" traffic because it doesn't actually fix traffic. Well, if you want to do that, then go right ahead, I guess. I feel like your time would be more effectively spent advocating at Planning for TOD that actually is TOD, but it's your time and your decision what to do with it.

It’s doesn’t fix traffic because a lot of people are willing to drive 45 minutes/1 hour/90 minutes to and from work. What building roads does is induce more demand for housing in a particular place. When there’s more demand, developers provide more supply.

You’re still ignoring the schools component. Is your argument there that adding school capacity just encourages people to have more kids so it doesn’t actually fix school capacity?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. I would say overburdened infrastructure (roads, parks, other county government facilities) rather than crumbling. Obviously existing residents need to foot the bill to get that back to healthy but we can’t keep falling further behind, so developers will need to foot the bill for their growth. If that means they have to settle for less profit, then so be it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing massive corporate profits.

What is your basis for saying that county roads, parks, and other county government facilities are overburdened?

OK.

Schools: Many of them are chronically overcrowded and have temporary classrooms, according to MCPS guidelines. Planning adopted a higher threshold for classifying a school as overcrowded, and even by that measure a number of schools are overcrowded.

Roads: I don’t think this needs explaining, but look at the Beltway or 270 at rush hour if you need more data.

Parks: Fields are booked wall to wall and some leagues can’t get the slots they need to meet demand in their programs. Because they’re used so much, a lot of the fields are bare, compacted dirt that is as hard as concrete.

And so on. The county did not scale infrastructure or services along with growth such that growth has caused the quality of life to deteriorate. It’s hard to be that incompetent, but that’s planning and the county council for you.

Needing someone to explain this to you makes YIMBYs look utterly clueless and hurts your credibility.

+100

Watch the YIMBY PP simply ignore this. Like a good cult member

People need to fight back before it is too late. This policy will destroy everything that made MOCO a desirable place to live. There will be nothing left to defend if people don't stand up to prevent ideological crazies.

Northern Virginia also has a penchant for hiring incompetent lunatics from the MOCO planning department, so this fight will be coming to the NOVA suburbs soon.

For example, Alexandria and Arlington?

No, I'm referring to Loudoun, Fairfax, and Prince William.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. I would say overburdened infrastructure (roads, parks, other county government facilities) rather than crumbling. Obviously existing residents need to foot the bill to get that back to healthy but we can’t keep falling further behind, so developers will need to foot the bill for their growth. If that means they have to settle for less profit, then so be it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing massive corporate profits.

What is your basis for saying that county roads, parks, and other county government facilities are overburdened?

OK.

Schools: Many of them are chronically overcrowded and have temporary classrooms, according to MCPS guidelines. Planning adopted a higher threshold for classifying a school as overcrowded, and even by that measure a number of schools are overcrowded.

Roads: I don’t think this needs explaining, but look at the Beltway or 270 at rush hour if you need more data.

Parks: Fields are booked wall to wall and some leagues can’t get the slots they need to meet demand in their programs. Because they’re used so much, a lot of the fields are bare, compacted dirt that is as hard as concrete.

And so on. The county did not scale infrastructure or services along with growth such that growth has caused the quality of life to deteriorate. It’s hard to be that incompetent, but that’s planning and the county council for you.

Needing someone to explain this to you makes YIMBYs look utterly clueless and hurts your credibility.

+100

Watch the YIMBY PP simply ignore this. Like a good cult member

People need to fight back before it is too late. This policy will destroy everything that made MOCO a desirable place to live. There will be nothing left to defend if people don't stand up to prevent ideological crazies.

Have you considered the possibility that this is actually something people want? The reason people aren't fighting back is because this is actually something people want?

Most people that live here unequivocally don't want these policy changes. There is an asymmetric advantage (for developers, real estate industry, construction industry) when lobbying for policy changes because the gains are
heavily concentrated among a small group of wealthy people. While the losses are spread among a much larger group of residents. Corruption and undue influence is very common for local government and it's not that difficult for wealthy. People to make quid pro quo donations to local political campaigns in exchange for implicit favors with the expectation that rezoning requests will get approved. Why else do you think the largest donors to local political campaigns are typically developers, and the construction industry??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. I would say overburdened infrastructure (roads, parks, other county government facilities) rather than crumbling. Obviously existing residents need to foot the bill to get that back to healthy but we can’t keep falling further behind, so developers will need to foot the bill for their growth. If that means they have to settle for less profit, then so be it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing massive corporate profits.

What is your basis for saying that county roads, parks, and other county government facilities are overburdened?

OK.

Schools: Many of them are chronically overcrowded and have temporary classrooms, according to MCPS guidelines. Planning adopted a higher threshold for classifying a school as overcrowded, and even by that measure a number of schools are overcrowded.

Roads: I don’t think this needs explaining, but look at the Beltway or 270 at rush hour if you need more data.

Parks: Fields are booked wall to wall and some leagues can’t get the slots they need to meet demand in their programs. Because they’re used so much, a lot of the fields are bare, compacted dirt that is as hard as concrete.

And so on. The county did not scale infrastructure or services along with growth such that growth has caused the quality of life to deteriorate. It’s hard to be that incompetent, but that’s planning and the county council for you.

Needing someone to explain this to you makes YIMBYs look utterly clueless and hurts your credibility.

+100

Watch the YIMBY PP simply ignore this. Like a good cult member

People need to fight back before it is too late. This policy will destroy everything that made MOCO a desirable place to live. There will be nothing left to defend if people don't stand up to prevent ideological crazies.

Have you considered the possibility that this is actually something people want? The reason people aren't fighting back is because this is actually something people want?

What is it, exactly, that you think upzoning is going to accomplish? The fundamental reason why housing is expensive here is because lots of people want to live here, and we have a shit ton of really, really rich people. Throwing out zoning laws isn't going to change that. It isn't going to make any difference at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. I would say overburdened infrastructure (roads, parks, other county government facilities) rather than crumbling. Obviously existing residents need to foot the bill to get that back to healthy but we can’t keep falling further behind, so developers will need to foot the bill for their growth. If that means they have to settle for less profit, then so be it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing massive corporate profits.

What is your basis for saying that county roads, parks, and other county government facilities are overburdened?

OK.

Schools: Many of them are chronically overcrowded and have temporary classrooms, according to MCPS guidelines. Planning adopted a higher threshold for classifying a school as overcrowded, and even by that measure a number of schools are overcrowded.

Roads: I don’t think this needs explaining, but look at the Beltway or 270 at rush hour if you need more data.

Parks: Fields are booked wall to wall and some leagues can’t get the slots they need to meet demand in their programs. Because they’re used so much, a lot of the fields are bare, compacted dirt that is as hard as concrete.

And so on. The county did not scale infrastructure or services along with growth such that growth has caused the quality of life to deteriorate. It’s hard to be that incompetent, but that’s planning and the county council for you.

Needing someone to explain this to you makes YIMBYs look utterly clueless and hurts your credibility.

+100

Watch the YIMBY PP simply ignore this. Like a good cult member

People need to fight back before it is too late. This policy will destroy everything that made MOCO a desirable place to live. There will be nothing left to defend if people don't stand up to prevent ideological crazies.

Northern Virginia also has a penchant for hiring incompetent lunatics from the MOCO planning department, so this fight will be coming to the NOVA suburbs soon.

For example, Alexandria and Arlington?

No, I'm referring to Loudoun, Fairfax, and Prince William.

Well, okay, but Alexandria and Arlington are NOVA suburbs too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. I would say overburdened infrastructure (roads, parks, other county government facilities) rather than crumbling. Obviously existing residents need to foot the bill to get that back to healthy but we can’t keep falling further behind, so developers will need to foot the bill for their growth. If that means they have to settle for less profit, then so be it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing massive corporate profits.

What is your basis for saying that county roads, parks, and other county government facilities are overburdened?

OK.

Schools: Many of them are chronically overcrowded and have temporary classrooms, according to MCPS guidelines. Planning adopted a higher threshold for classifying a school as overcrowded, and even by that measure a number of schools are overcrowded.

Roads: I don’t think this needs explaining, but look at the Beltway or 270 at rush hour if you need more data.

Parks: Fields are booked wall to wall and some leagues can’t get the slots they need to meet demand in their programs. Because they’re used so much, a lot of the fields are bare, compacted dirt that is as hard as concrete.

And so on. The county did not scale infrastructure or services along with growth such that growth has caused the quality of life to deteriorate. It’s hard to be that incompetent, but that’s planning and the county council for you.

Needing someone to explain this to you makes YIMBYs look utterly clueless and hurts your credibility.

+100

Watch the YIMBY PP simply ignore this. Like a good cult member

People need to fight back before it is too late. This policy will destroy everything that made MOCO a desirable place to live. There will be nothing left to defend if people don't stand up to prevent ideological crazies.

Have you considered the possibility that this is actually something people want? The reason people aren't fighting back is because this is actually something people want?

Most people that live here unequivocally don't want these policy changes. There is an asymmetric advantage (for developers, real estate industry, construction industry) when lobbying for policy changes because the gains are
heavily concentrated among a small group of wealthy people. While the losses are spread among a much larger group of residents. Corruption and undue influence is very common for local government and it's not that difficult for wealthy. People to make quid pro quo donations to local political campaigns in exchange for implicit favors with the expectation that rezoning requests will get approved. Why else do you think the largest donors to local political campaigns are typically developers, and the construction industry??

What are you basing this statement on? If most people who live here unequivocally didn't want these policy changes, then they would vote for the candidates who oppose these policy changes. But instead they vote for the candidates who support these policy changes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. I would say overburdened infrastructure (roads, parks, other county government facilities) rather than crumbling. Obviously existing residents need to foot the bill to get that back to healthy but we can’t keep falling further behind, so developers will need to foot the bill for their growth. If that means they have to settle for less profit, then so be it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing massive corporate profits.

What is your basis for saying that county roads, parks, and other county government facilities are overburdened?

OK.

Schools: Many of them are chronically overcrowded and have temporary classrooms, according to MCPS guidelines. Planning adopted a higher threshold for classifying a school as overcrowded, and even by that measure a number of schools are overcrowded.

Roads: I don’t think this needs explaining, but look at the Beltway or 270 at rush hour if you need more data.

Parks: Fields are booked wall to wall and some leagues can’t get the slots they need to meet demand in their programs. Because they’re used so much, a lot of the fields are bare, compacted dirt that is as hard as concrete.

And so on. The county did not scale infrastructure or services along with growth such that growth has caused the quality of life to deteriorate. It’s hard to be that incompetent, but that’s planning and the county council for you.

Needing someone to explain this to you makes YIMBYs look utterly clueless and hurts your credibility.

+100

Watch the YIMBY PP simply ignore this. Like a good cult member

People need to fight back before it is too late. This policy will destroy everything that made MOCO a desirable place to live. There will be nothing left to defend if people don't stand up to prevent ideological crazies.

Northern Virginia also has a penchant for hiring incompetent lunatics from the MOCO planning department, so this fight will be coming to the NOVA suburbs soon.

For example, Alexandria and Arlington?

No, I'm referring to Loudoun, Fairfax, and Prince William.

Well, okay, but Alexandria and Arlington are NOVA suburbs too.

They are too one-sided politically, so it's a lost cause to try to prevent it there. Places that are all democrat or all republican make it too easy for lobbyists and special interest groups to make policy decisions against the will of voters. Fairfax is too unbalanced as well. Loudoun is probably the safest due to the very vocal group of preservation advocates and the influential people that live horse country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. I would say overburdened infrastructure (roads, parks, other county government facilities) rather than crumbling. Obviously existing residents need to foot the bill to get that back to healthy but we can’t keep falling further behind, so developers will need to foot the bill for their growth. If that means they have to settle for less profit, then so be it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing massive corporate profits.

What is your basis for saying that county roads, parks, and other county government facilities are overburdened?

OK.

Schools: Many of them are chronically overcrowded and have temporary classrooms, according to MCPS guidelines. Planning adopted a higher threshold for classifying a school as overcrowded, and even by that measure a number of schools are overcrowded.

Roads: I don’t think this needs explaining, but look at the Beltway or 270 at rush hour if you need more data.

Parks: Fields are booked wall to wall and some leagues can’t get the slots they need to meet demand in their programs. Because they’re used so much, a lot of the fields are bare, compacted dirt that is as hard as concrete.

And so on. The county did not scale infrastructure or services along with growth such that growth has caused the quality of life to deteriorate. It’s hard to be that incompetent, but that’s planning and the county council for you.

Needing someone to explain this to you makes YIMBYs look utterly clueless and hurts your credibility.

+100

Watch the YIMBY PP simply ignore this. Like a good cult member

People need to fight back before it is too late. This policy will destroy everything that made MOCO a desirable place to live. There will be nothing left to defend if people don't stand up to prevent ideological crazies.

Have you considered the possibility that this is actually something people want? The reason people aren't fighting back is because this is actually something people want?

Most people that live here unequivocally don't want these policy changes. There is an asymmetric advantage (for developers, real estate industry, construction industry) when lobbying for policy changes because the gains are
heavily concentrated among a small group of wealthy people. While the losses are spread among a much larger group of residents. Corruption and undue influence is very common for local government and it's not that difficult for wealthy. People to make quid pro quo donations to local political campaigns in exchange for implicit favors with the expectation that rezoning requests will get approved. Why else do you think the largest donors to local political campaigns are typically developers, and the construction industry??

What are you basing this statement on? If most people who live here unequivocally didn't want these policy changes, then they would vote for the candidates who oppose these policy changes. But instead they vote for the candidates who support these policy changes.

None of these policy changes were on the table in the last election, aside from some Ministry of Truth version of Thrive 2050.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. You are both obnoxious and obviously don’t live in Montgomery County. Lots of roads are a disgrace here due to lack of maintenance. Many residential side streets have potholes in my neighborhood that haven’t been repaired for years. But when I think about crappy infrastructure in this county, I personally like to look at downtown Bethesda because it’s supposed to be the county’s urbanism pearl. All of the schools there are massively overcrowded. Stormwater infrature is so bad that you cannot cross the biggest intersection in the “city” Wisconsin and E-W Hwy without stepping into a massive puddle every time it rains hard. The county let developers build without set backs but refuses to force Pepco and utilities to bury wires so many sidewalks in this “city” are basically unusable by anyone in a wheelchair. Meanwhile there are new bike lanes installed everywhere which shows that new infrastructure is possible but no money is apparently available to fix and maintain anything else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

Friedson too. He and Riemer are cut from the same cloth.

Friedson is the one currently championing this attainable housing movement. He was the very special guest on a growth webinar back in February and was filled with glee about it.

Friedson and Riemer have both caused substantial damage to the County. Both need real jobs.

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Anonymous wrote:Blame the Builders Lobby/Association in your town.

They have run out of land to develop.

BS. The huge quantities of MoCo land that is underdeveloped. Turn the current commercial zoned areas into condos, apartments, etc. Developers would rather lobby to destroy SFH neighborhoods than develop the commercial properties. The land along the Pike is underutilized. It will never be office or retail space. Turn it into residential. The Pike has the infrastructure and Metro lines already there.

Listen to yourself. DESTROY SFH NEIGHBORHOODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 By allowing landowners to build duplexes.

Duplexes that will get turned into rentals. Ruin home ownership for the middle class and replace with rentals. Yay, we can all lay rent for the rest of our lives while building zero wealth. This is idiotic policy hidden under the guise of ‘improving affordable housing!’. It is nothing more than a land grab and stealing of wealth from the middle class.

Well, I guess you think renters are scary.

Renting sucks. Owning a home is the single biggest way the middle class is able to build wealth. But I bet you’re too financially stupid to understand this basic concept and are perfectly fine with ruining the last remaining pillar for the middle class. Yay, we will have your stupid socialist utopia when we are an entire nation of very mediocre renters for life beholden to corporations and investing group landlords who control all of the land and who can raise rents on a whim.

Are you a parody account?

Seriously, spend 1 minute on this. How in the world can housing be an unlimited source of wealth building? That wealth is only going up because housing prices go up, because NIMBYs stop housing production. Think about. Prices and home value don't go up unless more people want a more restricted good. Econ 101 champ.

Why do you hate renters so much? Why do you think certain people (owners) should get more wealth, where renters don't? Very selfish of you.

Owners should always get more wealth. They put up the capital and upkeep.

Renters get a place to live.

Why do business owners get wealthier versus a mid level manager?

If owners didn’t get more wealth than consumers there would be no incentive to invest and there would be no new housing. The left YIMBYs crack me up sometimes until I realize they’re making housing policy in this county.

Again, please explain how SFH owners can keep expecting faster-than-inflation property value growth, forever.

Please take Math 101 and get back to me when you realize that it's impossible.

I’m just curious: How did you decide that the previous poster said SFH owners need faster-than-inflation property value growth to come out ahead?

It's been the latest side-show to distract from their inability to address the concerns raised about additional densities, now pages back...

The distractions are endless.

By the way, speaking of pages back, did you know that not only are they not going to charge developers (or anyone else) increased impact fees for this mess, they plan to provide:

1. An exemption from the county’s development impact tax for three-bedroom and larger units in multi-family buildings.

2. A 50% discount on the development impact tax for single-family attached and detached dwellings that are 1,500 square feet or smaller (i.e., smaller homes, sometimes referred to as attainable housing)."

https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2024/06/01/how-montgomery-county-can-reinforce-the-goals.

3. Increasing exemptions for 3bdrm+ apartments and halving them for attainable size housing (not to mention a bunch of other changes). In addition, a revamping the public points system to minimize “excessive” additional requirements for residential construction.

This is from the growth and infrastructure policy. They’re proposing to cut these fees even though there’s no evidence that smaller houses generate fewer students and there’s no evidence that lower fees benefit consumers. The impact fee program used to be structured very fairly. Fees were based on the number of students a particular type of housing was expected to generate. Since the program started, they’ve layered a number of exemptions and discounts into it, hollowing out one of two dedicated funding sources for the MCPS capital budget. As a result, we’ve seen school construction projects downsized and delayed.

Hans Riemer was responsible for messing up impact fees. He’s going to have left a lasting legacy of mismanagement in Moco.

This is all sad. I can understand wanting to upzone SFH areas that are close to metro. It's only a matter of time before greater density comes. But to not charge developers appropriate impact fees just indicates that the MoCo powers that be are in the pocket of developers. And the crowded MCPS schools and crumbling infrastructure are a testament to that.

Which crumbling infrastructure are you talking about, specifically? Are you talking about crowded and crumbling MCPS schools, or is there non-school infrastructure that you perceive as crumbling?

DP. I would say overburdened infrastructure (roads, parks, other county government facilities) rather than crumbling. Obviously existing residents need to foot the bill to get that back to healthy but we can’t keep falling further behind, so developers will need to foot the bill for their growth. If that means they have to settle for less profit, then so be it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing massive corporate profits.

What is your basis for saying that county roads, parks, and other county government facilities are overburdened?

OK.

Schools: Many of them are chronically overcrowded and have temporary classrooms, according to MCPS guidelines. Planning adopted a higher threshold for classifying a school as overcrowded, and even by that measure a number of schools are overcrowded.

Roads: I don’t think this needs explaining, but look at the Beltway or 270 at rush hour if you need more data.

Parks: Fields are booked wall to wall and some leagues can’t get the slots they need to meet demand in their programs. Because they’re used so much, a lot of the fields are bare, compacted dirt that is as hard as concrete.

And so on. The county did not scale infrastructure or services along with growth such that growth has caused the quality of life to deteriorate. It’s hard to be that incompetent, but that’s planning and the county council for you.

Needing someone to explain this to you makes YIMBYs look utterly clueless and hurts your credibility.

+100

Watch the YIMBY PP simply ignore this. Like a good cult member

People need to fight back before it is too late. This policy will destroy everything that made MOCO a desirable place to live. There will be nothing left to defend if people don't stand up to prevent ideological crazies.

Have you considered the possibility that this is actually something people want? The reason people aren't fighting back is because this is actually something people want?

What is it, exactly, that you think upzoning is going to accomplish? The fundamental reason why housing is expensive here is because lots of people want to live here, and we have a shit ton of really, really rich people. Throwing out zoning laws isn't going to change that. It isn't going to make any difference at all.

No worries. The rich are leaving. As noted, they have choices and are less dependent on their residents for their wealth. Upzoning will simply reduce the ability of middle class and umc residents from generating their own wealth.