Reply to Marc Elrich doesn’t think there “is demand for market housing.” He’s never going to fix our housing.

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Reply to "Marc Elrich doesn’t think there “is demand for market housing.” He’s never going to fix our housing."

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Elrich is incompetent but housing is an issue. The County, like the rest of the area, is growing in population.

If you look at areas like Silver Spring up Georgia Ave, Langley Park, and parts of Rockville (Rollins Ave behind the strip malls), there is lots of affordable housing there. High-rise apartment buildings or garden apartments. Nothing fancy, but nice enough and not too crazy price-wise.

But what's being built now if you look at Rockville or Bethesda where a lot of the high-density housing is going in, is luxury condos and apartments. I dont' blame the developer -- most of your costs are in the structure not the interior, so if it's $10mln to build low-income and $13mln to build luxury, spend the extra $3mln because you'll make it back in much higher rent/sales prices.

So how do we fix this? More incentives to build lower-price units? They already have to build 10-15% of units for low-income, but it's not enough.

Or maybe we zone parts of upcounty for high-density? How many apartment high-rises are there in Clarksburg?[/quote]

1. Clarksburg is almost built out.
2. There is a lot of multi-unit housing in Clarksburg.
3. Clarksburg is a really stupid place to build high-rise apartments (which is one reason why there aren't a lot of high-rise apartments in Clarksburg, even in places where it's allowed).[/quote]

If they're able t build new housing in Bethesda and Rockville, they can do it in Clarksburg. Those areas are way more built out than Clarksburg.[/quote]

Of course they CAN do it in Clarksburg. The question is whether it makes sense to do it in Clarksburg, where almost everything is less than 20 years old, and it's a long way to almost anything. Do you think developers will be eager to build 20-story apartment buildings next to the bus stop for the 75 RideOn at Harris Teeter? If Adventist Hospital had been allowed to build its hospital at Cabin Branch, AND if that regional rail line from Shady Grove to Frederick had been built, then it might have made sense. But instead we got an outlet mall and buses that run every 30 minutes to Germantown.[/quote]

It's not idea but it can work. I think there's a false assumption that low-income people only travel by public transportation and that's just not true. Look at the success of the low-income housing neighborhood in Avenel in Potomac for example.

Sure, it may not be suitable for all low-income applicants, but it would probably work for a lot of people.[/quote]

The topic was high-rise apartments, not housing for low-income people. With almost all of the housing in Clarksburg being new and thus subject to the MPDU requirements, Clarksburg already has a lot of housing for low-income people. In some of the developments, 25% of the units are MPDUs.[/quote]

This. The county also decided that they didn't want metro/ rail to go past shady Grove so it would be stupid to put high rise apartments there. See what happens when our local politicians lack big picture thinking? Instead of coming up with workable solutions, they'd rather criticize the people who live 'far away" by telling them to just live closer to work. If you don't improve roads and public transportation, it limits your ability to build all types of housing.[/quote]

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