MoCo Housing Strategies effect on MCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS can barely tend to the schools it has today. So many schools are at or over capacity, particularly in areas likely to be most affected by this atrocious hand-out to developers, and the county struggles to approve and pay for capital improvements. There’s no attention in this proposal to schools, infrastructure, and other basic aspects of living in the county. The county is selling out its residents to developers. Unacceptable.

People need places to live. The population is growing and will continue to grow. That means we need more homes somewhere.

Great. Build them on land, as zoned.

If I wanted to live next door to mini apts. and townhomes, and multiplexes, I would have made that decision when I purchased a SFH, on a street zoned as such.

Sorry, you own your lot, not all the lots around yours.

I guess if he wants to be surrounded by SFHs he could buy those properties around his.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS can barely tend to the schools it has today. So many schools are at or over capacity, particularly in areas likely to be most affected by this atrocious hand-out to developers, and the county struggles to approve and pay for capital improvements. There’s no attention in this proposal to schools, infrastructure, and other basic aspects of living in the county. The county is selling out its residents to developers. Unacceptable.

People need places to live. The population is growing and will continue to grow. That means we need more homes somewhere.

Not really. People will move where there is available and affordable housing. That doesn't have to mean additional housing in Montgomery County, MD. New housing is a continual Ponzi scheme here, where new units do not provide enough funding for their necessary infrastructure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some coverage of the meeting at BCC

https://moco360.media/2024/09/26/zoning-changes-major-opposition-at-bethesda-listening-session/

Not good coverage, poorly representing the concerns shared at the session.

They are spouting the same nonsense they did when they were working on the Bethesda Downtown Plan and the Woodmont Triangle. All we are seeing is the few affordable apartments (the oft derided Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing) and small or mid-sized houses being torn down to make way for low income housing and McMansions. Bethesda is becoming more split between government subsidized low income MPDUs and huge homes.

This is what voters want. Our local politicians have been targeting the middle class for the past 10-20 years.

Our ‘leaders’ have been slowly but surely squeezing out the middle class in MoCo.

Allowing developers to build duplexes or triplexes offers an alternative to McMansions.

What's your plan to build housing for the middle class?

There's also tons and tons of unused land further out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do they have any projections of the impact on schools? I feel like this would maybe add 10 families per year to an elementary school boundary area. Just based on how many houses would get sold in a year to a developer who chooses to build a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Not all of them have school-age kids and if they do not all at the same level. So maybe 2 kids per year to each elementary, 8-12 to middle and high schools? They should really be trying to calculate this and the cost to the school system and how that will be paid for. It will probably add more property tax revenue.

They don’t even have projections of how many units will be built or whether the strategy will cause prices to rise or fall. They assume it will make prices go down because they assume multiplexes won’t affect other apartment/condo production and because they didn’t take economics past Econ 101.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS can barely tend to the schools it has today. So many schools are at or over capacity, particularly in areas likely to be most affected by this atrocious hand-out to developers, and the county struggles to approve and pay for capital improvements. There’s no attention in this proposal to schools, infrastructure, and other basic aspects of living in the county. The county is selling out its residents to developers. Unacceptable.

People need places to live. The population is growing and will continue to grow. That means we need more homes somewhere.

Not really. People will move where there is available and affordable housing. That doesn't have to mean additional housing in Montgomery County, MD. New housing is a continual Ponzi scheme here, where new units do not provide enough funding for their necessary infrastructure.

This. The surrounding public infrastructure is part of the value of land. That’s why people pay very high transfer fees when they buy a house. Developers have convinced the council that they should be able to capture the value of surrounding public infrastructure as profits for themselves.

[Anonymous]

MoCo is terrible at accurately projecting how many people will live in the housing being built and the amount it would add to the school age population. There's a new condo building in Bethesda with 40+ large units, and the developer said it would add 3 students to the public school population in its impact statement: 1 in elementary school, 1 in middle school, 1 in high school. The actual amount of enrolled students was nearly 10x that and MoCo Planning doesn't hold the developer accountable, and the developer gets off free having avoided the school impact taxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MoCo is terrible at accurately projecting how many people will live in the housing being built and the amount it would add to the school age population. There's a new condo building in Bethesda with 40+ large units, and the developer said it would add 3 students to the public school population in its impact statement: 1 in elementary school, 1 in middle school, 1 in high school. The actual amount of enrolled students was nearly 10x that and MoCo Planning doesn't hold the developer accountable, and the developer gets off free having avoided the school impact taxes.

The developer just used Planning’s formulas, which have been changed over the years to minimize projections of student generation in places such as Bethesda. This isn’t the developer’s fault. Blame Planning. They’re responsible for the formula. Whether we should trust any of Planning’s work is a reasonable question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some coverage of the meeting at BCC

https://moco360.media/2024/09/26/zoning-changes-major-opposition-at-bethesda-listening-session/

Not good coverage, poorly representing the concerns shared at the session.

They are spouting the same nonsense they did when they were working on the Bethesda Downtown Plan and the Woodmont Triangle. All we are seeing is the few affordable apartments (the oft derided Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing) and small or mid-sized houses being torn down to make way for low income housing and McMansions. Bethesda is becoming more split between government subsidized low income MPDUs and huge homes.

This is what voters want. Our local politicians have been targeting the middle class for the past 10-20 years.

Our ‘leaders’ have been slowly but surely squeezing out the middle class in MoCo.

Allowing developers to build duplexes or triplexes offers an alternative to McMansions.

What's your plan to build housing for the middle class?

There's also tons and tons of unused land further out.

Where the infrastructure needs would be even greater. How does that make sense?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do they have any projections of the impact on schools? I feel like this would maybe add 10 families per year to an elementary school boundary area. Just based on how many houses would get sold in a year to a developer who chooses to build a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Not all of them have school-age kids and if they do not all at the same level. So maybe 2 kids per year to each elementary, 8-12 to middle and high schools? They should really be trying to calculate this and the cost to the school system and how that will be paid for. It will probably add more property tax revenue.

They don’t even have projections of how many units will be built or whether the strategy will cause prices to rise or fall. They assume it will make prices go down because they assume multiplexes won’t affect other apartment/condo production and because they didn’t take economics past Econ 101.

PP here. Number of units built seems very difficult to project. I can't imagine any projection would be remotely correct. I think the number of units would be marginal at best and the impact on prices will also be very marginal.

I'm curious though, are you saying if they build a quadplex that means 3 fewer units in a large apartment building?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some coverage of the meeting at BCC

https://moco360.media/2024/09/26/zoning-changes-major-opposition-at-bethesda-listening-session/

Not good coverage, poorly representing the concerns shared at the session.

They are spouting the same nonsense they did when they were working on the Bethesda Downtown Plan and the Woodmont Triangle. All we are seeing is the few affordable apartments (the oft derided Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing) and small or mid-sized houses being torn down to make way for low income housing and McMansions. Bethesda is becoming more split between government subsidized low income MPDUs and huge homes.

This is what voters want. Our local politicians have been targeting the middle class for the past 10-20 years.

Our ‘leaders’ have been slowly but surely squeezing out the middle class in MoCo.

Allowing developers to build duplexes or triplexes offers an alternative to McMansions.

What's your plan to build housing for the middle class?

There's also tons and tons of unused land further out.

Where the infrastructure needs would be even greater. How does that make sense?

Of course it makes sense. PP won't have to see the new housing so that's a win. Of course they will complain about higher taxes for more roads and public safety facilities but they will pretend it is because of "waste" and not suburban sprawl.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do they have any projections of the impact on schools? I feel like this would maybe add 10 families per year to an elementary school boundary area. Just based on how many houses would get sold in a year to a developer who chooses to build a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Not all of them have school-age kids and if they do not all at the same level. So maybe 2 kids per year to each elementary, 8-12 to middle and high schools? They should really be trying to calculate this and the cost to the school system and how that will be paid for. It will probably add more property tax revenue.

They don’t even have projections of how many units will be built or whether the strategy will cause prices to rise or fall. They assume it will make prices go down because they assume multiplexes won’t affect other apartment/condo production and because they didn’t take economics past Econ 101.

PP here. Number of units built seems very difficult to project. I can't imagine any projection would be remotely correct. I think the number of units would be marginal at best and the impact on prices will also be very marginal.

I'm curious though, are you saying if they build a quadplex that means 3 fewer units in a large apartment building?

I’m not looking for a precise number of units. I’m looking for rough orders of magnitude.

Yes, I am saying if they build quads (not just one, which won’t make a difference), will fewer large apartment building be built? I would put that in the category of bad outcomes because we would lose single family housing stock without adding any multi family units beyond what was going to be built anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some coverage of the meeting at BCC

https://moco360.media/2024/09/26/zoning-changes-major-opposition-at-bethesda-listening-session/

Not good coverage, poorly representing the concerns shared at the session.

They are spouting the same nonsense they did when they were working on the Bethesda Downtown Plan and the Woodmont Triangle. All we are seeing is the few affordable apartments (the oft derided Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing) and small or mid-sized houses being torn down to make way for low income housing and McMansions. Bethesda is becoming more split between government subsidized low income MPDUs and huge homes.

This is what voters want. Our local politicians have been targeting the middle class for the past 10-20 years.

Our ‘leaders’ have been slowly but surely squeezing out the middle class in MoCo.

Allowing developers to build duplexes or triplexes offers an alternative to McMansions.

What's your plan to build housing for the middle class?

There's also tons and tons of unused land further out.

Where the infrastructure needs would be even greater. How does that make sense?

Some infrastructure is cheaper, such as roads, is cheaper. Some, such as schools, is much more expensive.

[Anonymous]

Developers BS on number of students who will live in the buildings. Always have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do they have any projections of the impact on schools? I feel like this would maybe add 10 families per year to an elementary school boundary area. Just based on how many houses would get sold in a year to a developer who chooses to build a duplex or triplex or quadplex. Not all of them have school-age kids and if they do not all at the same level. So maybe 2 kids per year to each elementary, 8-12 to middle and high schools? They should really be trying to calculate this and the cost to the school system and how that will be paid for. It will probably add more property tax revenue.

They don’t even have projections of how many units will be built or whether the strategy will cause prices to rise or fall. They assume it will make prices go down because they assume multiplexes won’t affect other apartment/condo production and because they didn’t take economics past Econ 101.

PP here. Number of units built seems very difficult to project. I can't imagine any projection would be remotely correct. I think the number of units would be marginal at best and the impact on prices will also be very marginal.

I'm curious though, are you saying if they build a quadplex that means 3 fewer units in a large apartment building?

I’m not looking for a precise number of units. I’m looking for rough orders of magnitude.

Yes, I am saying if they build quads (not just one, which won’t make a difference), will fewer large apartment building be built? I would put that in the category of bad outcomes because we would lose single family housing stock without adding any multi family units beyond what was going to be built anyway.

I think of duplexes etc. as very different from apartment buildings. They are essentially townhouses. They are attached single family homes.

[Anonymous]

Marc Elrich's interview WTOP is a good summary of the many problems with the Attainable Housing Initiative. In short this is not about affordable housing. If you can't read this, just read the following snippet:

Anne Kramer: If this becomes a proposal that the county council considers, if I understand this correctly, you don’t have the power to override it. So what other alternatives are there then?

Marc Elrich: Well, there are no other immediate alternatives. The council is going to make a decision about what they’re going to do. I think this whole dismissal of what people think about their neighborhoods is kind of stunning. This is a place where we pride ourselves, and everybody comes here. People discover great neighborhoods they want to live in. The idea that the council can just decide at random that people can build by right things, that the master plans, that people moved into the neighborhoods thinking they were going to have that, they don’t have that anymore, is kind of shocking.

If this was done for a reason, where you could say, ‘We have to do this to get affordable housing. This is the only way we can get affordable housing.’ I’d think differently about it, but this is a fraud the way they presented it. There’s no other word to use for it.

https://wtop.com/montgomery-county/2024/09/montgomery-co-exec-elrich-says-initiative-pitched-as-promoting-affordable-housing-is-misleading-and-a-fraud/