MoCo Housing Strategies effect on MCPS

[Anonymous]

Gaithersburg council approved plan for old Lake Forest Mall site to include "affordable" housing. Whatever Hs serve that area is probably already overcrowded but will add students. Do they plan to boundary study Lake Forest area schools?

[Anonymous]

Our high school was placed on an intersection that was probably scarcely traveled 30 years ago when the school was built. Today it is a heavily traveled intersection that is clogged each morning by cars trying to get into and out of the school. The overcrowding doesn't have an effect on the students ability to do well, alone. The cars honking and frustrated drivers have an effect on the quality of life in the entire neighborhood.
We need to vote in such a way as to have a different class of people making the decisions that effect our children ans neighborhoods.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our high school was placed on an intersection that was probably scarcely traveled 30 years ago when the school was built. Today it is a heavily traveled intersection that is clogged each morning by cars trying to get into and out of the school. The overcrowding doesn't have an effect on the students ability to do well, alone. The cars honking and frustrated drivers have an effect on the quality of life in the entire neighborhood.
We need to vote in such a way as to have a different class of people making the decisions that effect our children ans neighborhoods.

Think about what that neighborhood looked like 30 years before the high school was built.

Yes, neighborhoods change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gaithersburg council approved plan for old Lake Forest Mall site to include "affordable" housing. Whatever Hs serve that area is probably already overcrowded but will add students. Do they plan to boundary study Lake Forest area schools?

Crown HS will pull from Gaithersburg HS.

[Anonymous]

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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.

Anyone who is talking about duplexes hasn’t been following this. The number of duplexes that get built would be in the dozens because the math doesn’t work well in most places. I agree that duplexes are different and would be helpful but so would unicorns. Townhouses would be good too and they work in a few more places.

Anything stacked is going to be a substitute for apartments. Most of the units added are going to be stacked because the math generally works better for those. We will trade SFH for apartments, which is bad for the housing market.

But what they are proposing making "by right" is small scale which is up to 2.5 stories. Quadplexes won't be allowed everywhere - that is for near transit/growth corridors. So they can't so three stacked units by right, perhaps 2 and 2 stacked units in some places. If what you are saying is right then most neighborhoods won't be impacted by this at all since they aren't going to build any significant number of side by side duplexes or triplexes.

A triplex is a basement apartment plus two above-ground apartments and fits within the 2.5-story envelope. 2x2s are also apartment substitutes. A lot of land will be available for apartment/condo construction, and some will be built. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t suppress starts on large projects, so at least some of the units gained through upzoning will be offset by large projects not built. In addition, the mere possibility of more units entering the market through small projects may make big developers less likely to build big projects. These are the hearts of our downtown cores, so if there’s a slowdown in production, it’s not just the housing market that will hurt.

So parking for 1 house would become parking for 5 houses.

A lot of housing doesn't come with dedicated/assigned parking spots.

But the cars have to go somewhere..we have 1 Group house on our street which already complicates things.

How so? Are they taking spots that you own?

No but I live on a small narrow street. Two cars can not pass if cars are parked on both sides. Most people have a 1'car driveway. The group house has 5 cars and 2 commercial trucks so they use up an extra house or two of street parking. If there was more than one house like that, it would be quite difficult to drive down the street if a second car was coming the other way .

You don't get out much if you think that's an unusual situation. Do you ever drive in neighborhoods inside the beltway? This isn't the problem you seem to think it is.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Very little of this thread seems to be about the effect on MCPS.

The main effect of this on MCPS is that the gap in the capital budget will get even bigger because impact fees are set below seat costs and because the Attainable Housing Strategy proposed setting some impact fees at zero. If you like overcrowded schools, this is your strategy.

The capital budget does not need to come from only impact fees. We paid for schools long before impact fees.

And it doesn’t come only from impact fees! It comes from impact fees, recordation tax, and GO bonds. We’ve had impact fees for more than 30 years and before that we had proffer. I don’t know why you’re so opposed to the county capturing part of the value it adds to land through taxes.

Paying for schools through local property taxes and income taxes is what we should do. But large one-time fees discourage the activity they're attached to. And we shouldn't be discouraging more housing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gaithersburg council approved plan for old Lake Forest Mall site to include "affordable" housing. Whatever Hs serve that area is probably already overcrowded but will add students. Do they plan to boundary study Lake Forest area schools?

Crown HS will pull from Gaithersburg HS.

Yes, but the Lakeforest Mall site is zoned for Watkins Mill, which is not overcapacity. But WMHS is also included in the upcoming Crown study.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Gaithersburg council approved plan for old Lake Forest Mall site to include "affordable" housing. Whatever Hs serve that area is probably already overcrowded but will add students. Do they plan to boundary study Lake Forest area schools?

Crown HS will pull from Gaithersburg HS.

Yes, but the Lakeforest Mall site is zoned for Watkins Mill, which is not overcapacity. But WMHS is also included in the upcoming Crown study.

The Lakeforest site is also zoned to South Lake ES, which is at capacity already, and Neelsville MS, which has seats available.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Very little of this thread seems to be about the effect on MCPS.

The main effect of this on MCPS is that the gap in the capital budget will get even bigger because impact fees are set below seat costs and because the Attainable Housing Strategy proposed setting some impact fees at zero. If you like overcrowded schools, this is your strategy.

The capital budget does not need to come from only impact fees. We paid for schools long before impact fees.

And it doesn’t come only from impact fees! It comes from impact fees, recordation tax, and GO bonds. We’ve had impact fees for more than 30 years and before that we had proffer. I don’t know why you’re so opposed to the county capturing part of the value it adds to land through taxes.

Paying for schools through local property taxes and income taxes is what we should do. But large one-time fees discourage the activity they're attached to. And we shouldn't be discouraging more housing.

Austin has the highest impact fees in its region and the fastest housing growth. I get that developers don’t want to pay taxes. No one does, really, but you’re overstating their impact on production. Developers usually spend more on lawyers to get their projects approved than they do on impact fees, so maybe we should work on getting rid of that really high cost, which doesn’t provide societal benefit, before we talk about lowering taxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very little of this thread seems to be about the effect on MCPS.

The main effect of this on MCPS is that the gap in the capital budget will get even bigger because impact fees are set below seat costs and because the Attainable Housing Strategy proposed setting some impact fees at zero. If you like overcrowded schools, this is your strategy.

The capital budget does not need to come from only impact fees. We paid for schools long before impact fees.

And it doesn’t come only from impact fees! It comes from impact fees, recordation tax, and GO bonds. We’ve had impact fees for more than 30 years and before that we had proffer. I don’t know why you’re so opposed to the county capturing part of the value it adds to land through taxes.

Paying for schools through local property taxes and income taxes is what we should do. But large one-time fees discourage the activity they're attached to. And we shouldn't be discouraging more housing.

Austin has the highest impact fees in its region and the fastest housing growth. I get that developers don’t want to pay taxes. No one does, really, but you’re overstating their impact on production. Developers usually spend more on lawyers to get their projects approved than they do on impact fees, so maybe we should work on getting rid of that really high cost, which doesn’t provide societal benefit, before we talk about lowering taxes.

You think Montgomery County is going to reduce their regulations and administrative procedures?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Very little of this thread seems to be about the effect on MCPS.

The main effect of this on MCPS is that the gap in the capital budget will get even bigger because impact fees are set below seat costs and because the Attainable Housing Strategy proposed setting some impact fees at zero. If you like overcrowded schools, this is your strategy.

The capital budget does not need to come from only impact fees. We paid for schools long before impact fees.

And it doesn’t come only from impact fees! It comes from impact fees, recordation tax, and GO bonds. We’ve had impact fees for more than 30 years and before that we had proffer. I don’t know why you’re so opposed to the county capturing part of the value it adds to land through taxes.

Paying for schools through local property taxes and income taxes is what we should do. But large one-time fees discourage the activity they're attached to. And we shouldn't be discouraging more housing.

Austin has the highest impact fees in its region and the fastest housing growth. I get that developers don’t want to pay taxes. No one does, really, but you’re overstating their impact on production. Developers usually spend more on lawyers to get their projects approved than they do on impact fees, so maybe we should work on getting rid of that really high cost, which doesn’t provide societal benefit, before we talk about lowering taxes.

Austin's impact fees are far less than Montgomery County's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Gaithersburg council approved plan for old Lake Forest Mall site to include "affordable" housing. Whatever Hs serve that area is probably already overcrowded but will add students. Do they plan to boundary study Lake Forest area schools?

Even if these new residents won't be contributing much in the way of taxes, we can always raise taxes to help cover the shortfall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gaithersburg council approved plan for old Lake Forest Mall site to include "affordable" housing. Whatever Hs serve that area is probably already overcrowded but will add students. Do they plan to boundary study Lake Forest area schools?

Crown HS will pull from Gaithersburg HS.

I assume that area is Watkins Mill?

[Anonymous]

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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.

In Frederick or Howard Co?

[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.

In Frederick or Howard Co?

In the Ag Reserve.

And they can just teleport to their jobs.