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.

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?

Far more likely that the pro-development propaganda along with with the multi-layered approach, combining state and local legislation with changes to master plans, zoning text amendments and the like, has allowed each element of the latter to be enacted without the vast majority of folks realizing the likely impacts.

Option 1: the majority of voters are ok with the policies enacted by the officials they elected
Option 2: conspiracy fictions

So you're going with Option 2.

Option 3: the majority of voters have no idea what's going on and vote for whomever their union tells them to.

Option 3: anti-democracy propaganda

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:

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?

Far more likely that the pro-development propaganda along with with the multi-layered approach, combining state and local legislation with changes to master plans, zoning text amendments and the like, has allowed each element of the latter to be enacted without the vast majority of folks realizing the likely impacts.

Option 1: the majority of voters are ok with the policies enacted by the officials they elected
Option 2: conspiracy fictions

So you're going with Option 2.

It is not “conspiracy fiction” it is a multifaceted strategy to change zoning rules through death by a thousand cuts. The zoning changes are very technical and each individual proposal on its own can be sold as a “reasonable change” However, the cumulative impact of the zoning changes represents a fundamental shift in state/county land use standards. Most voters are not aware that a majority “affordable housing” advocates want to eliminate single family zoning and reduce impact fees that are essential for school funding.

This is lobbying and political advocacy 101. It’s much easier for special interest groups to layer on a bunch of one off policy changes to accomplish their goals than push through a singular bill that constitutes a massive overhaul of existing laws.

You have literally contributed nothing to this discussion and continue to respond with evasive circular comments or respond to arguments with questions. If you truly had something to support your agenda there would be more substance in the rebuttals to legitimate concerns pointed out by county residents.

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.

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?

Far more likely that the pro-development propaganda along with with the multi-layered approach, combining state and local legislation with changes to master plans, zoning text amendments and the like, has allowed each element of the latter to be enacted without the vast majority of folks realizing the likely impacts.

Option 1: the majority of voters are ok with the policies enacted by the officials they elected
Option 2: conspiracy fictions

So you're going with Option 2.

It is not “conspiracy fiction” it is a multifaceted strategy to change zoning rules through death by a thousand cuts. The zoning changes are very technical and each individual proposal on its own can be sold as a “reasonable change” However, the cumulative impact of the zoning changes represents a fundamental shift in state/county land use standards. Most voters are not aware that a majority “affordable housing” advocates want to eliminate single family zoning and reduce impact fees that are essential for school funding.

This is lobbying and political advocacy 101. It’s much easier for special interest groups to layer on a bunch of one off policy changes to accomplish their goals than push through a singular bill that constitutes a massive overhaul of existing laws.

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?

Far more likely that the pro-development propaganda along with with the multi-layered approach, combining state and local legislation with changes to master plans, zoning text amendments and the like, has allowed each element of the latter to be enacted without the vast majority of folks realizing the likely impacts.

Option 1: the majority of voters are ok with the policies enacted by the officials they elected
Option 2: conspiracy fictions

So you're going with Option 2.

It is not “conspiracy fiction” it is a multifaceted strategy to change zoning rules through death by a thousand cuts. The zoning changes are very technical and each individual proposal on its own can be sold as a “reasonable change” However, the cumulative impact of the zoning changes represents a fundamental shift in state/county land use standards. Most voters are not aware that a majority “affordable housing” advocates want to eliminate single family zoning and reduce impact fees that are essential for school funding.

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?

Far more likely that the pro-development propaganda along with with the multi-layered approach, combining state and local legislation with changes to master plans, zoning text amendments and the like, has allowed each element of the latter to be enacted without the vast majority of folks realizing the likely impacts.

Option 1: the majority of voters are ok with the policies enacted by the officials they elected
Option 2: conspiracy fictions

So you're going with Option 2.

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. 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.

Sigh.

You think that the county’s crumbling infrastructure is a fiction. So the most generous explanation is that you don’t live here.

Wasn’t that long ago that the YIMBY urbanists would claim that their policies were necessary to increase tax revenues to pay for our infrastructure needs. Now they just pretend that there’s no problem.

That’s right. All of the YIMBY promises about urbanism being a fiscal boon have turned out to be false. In fact, it turns out we actually have to subsidize market rate housing (Depending on what you believe,
the subsidy either goes to the developer or the consumer whose household income is 120 to 150 percent of AMI. It’s a poor use of public money either way.).

The county’s compact growth approach is a clear loser but instead of backing away from it the county keeps trying to make other changes to make it work. The problem is the county’s approach is inherently flawed because too many people have to drive to work and because if you prohibit development in a massive part of the county it makes prices for all housing go up. In addition, the YIMBYs have succeeded in making housing construction in parts of the county where it actually is allowed undesirable because they oppose the infrastructure needed to make it commercially viable. If you limit the supply of something, the price goes up assuming constant or increasing demand.

One major problem is that YIMBYs have focused on housing to the exclusion of all other land uses. There are a lot of apartments in this area closer to more jobs than apartments in Silver Spring, Olney, Wheaton, or Bethesda. The apartments closer to jobs are always going to fill up faster and command higher rents than the apartments that require long train rides or drives. The developers know this, and it makes them reluctant to build in Montgomery County.

“Compact Growth” is actively harmful to the county if it doesn’t create jobs and economic growth. It’s that simple.

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/"side-show" commenter. A look at conditions of MCPS schools actually does show this. Leaky roofs and the resulting decay, for example (certainly not the only example), with no funding to address them. As for non-school crumbling infrastructure, the condition of roads in the southeast of the county comes to mind, as does a PP's note about the condition of overused parks, with field and other conditions analagous to "crumbling."

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.

Disingenuous "Got it," there, as though you have captured the PP's entire position from the one slice you choose to address.

And an alternative to the burden of more road maintenance just as easily could be zoning that limits population growth in areas requiring such locally maintained road infrastructure. Like detached SFH zoning. Oh, wait...

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?

Far more likely that the pro-development propaganda along with with the multi-layered approach, combining state and local legislation with changes to master plans, zoning text amendments and the like, has allowed each element of the latter to be enacted without the vast majority of folks realizing the likely impacts.

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.

False assumption, there. Representative government can result in unpopular legislation, as representatives only have to garner votes at the time of election. Their positions across many issues might be evaluated versus their opponent; they might be elected with some of their issue positions being deeply unpopular if enough other positions are popular. Those following through on the unpopular positions might endanger their re-electability, but there are ways around that, e.g.:

> Transfer of responsibility, like when conservatives packed SCOTUS (which, conveniently, has lifetime appointment to shield from populist influence) to the tune of overturning Roe. Here, we have the appointed Planning Board to take some of the heat from County Council, who can throw thier hands in the air and say, "Planning says so. I guess it's just the way it should be!"

> Assumption of changing electorate, so that when the next election comes, the policies pursued that were unpopular among the prior electorate are subsumed by the demographic change, possibly associated with the policies, themselves. In this case, ever-bluer population shifts/increases in the county enabled by advocates for additional densities.

> Issue zealotry, such that the elected representative does not care about reelection if they can get the issue settled in their favor (with more or less permanent effect, as we would have here for zoning changes). This can be enabled by deep-pocketed lobbying, ensuring golden parachutes for exiting representatives.

> Political nimbleness, difficult to be sure, wherein the representative is such an adept politician or magnetic personality (among at least a significant portion of the population) as to be able to minimize the reelectability impact of unpopular policies. There are more impressive politicians, to be sure, but the example of Trump, with tax policy that works against the majority of his supporters largely being ignored by the same, is of current relevance.

A reminder to others about The Questioner -- this type of poster aims to undercut an opposing position simply by asking questions without ever properly responding with positions of their own that might be critiqued. This technique also may be used in unofficial forums, such as we have here, to lay bare opposition rationale, not so much to counter it within the forum so much as to prepare The Questioner for countering it in official proceedings, where opposition would, then, not have the benefit of the same prior openness of the opposite rationale. This is especially effective when The Questioner holds an official position in these proceedings, where opposition might be time constrained (e.g., public comment at a Board or Council meeting) but The Questioner is not and would have the scheduled position not only of plan presentation, but of rebuttal to opposition (e.g., Planning Board, County Council & staff).

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. 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.

Sigh.

You think that the county’s crumbling infrastructure is a fiction. So the most generous explanation is that you don’t live here.

Wasn’t that long ago that the YIMBY urbanists would claim that their policies were necessary to increase tax revenues to pay for our infrastructure needs. Now they just pretend that there’s no problem.

That’s right. All of the YIMBY promises about urbanism being a fiscal boon have turned out to be false. In fact, it turns out we actually have to subsidize market rate housing (Depending on what you believe,
the subsidy either goes to the developer or the consumer whose household income is 120 to 150 percent of AMI. It’s a poor use of public money either way.).

The county’s compact growth approach is a clear loser but instead of backing away from it the county keeps trying to make other changes to make it work. The problem is the county’s approach is inherently flawed because too many people have to drive to work and because if you prohibit development in a massive part of the county it makes prices for all housing go up. In addition, the YIMBYs have succeeded in making housing construction in parts of the county where it actually is allowed undesirable because they oppose the infrastructure needed to make it commercially viable. If you limit the supply of something, the price goes up assuming constant or increasing demand.

One major problem is that YIMBYs have focused on housing to the exclusion of all other land uses. There are a lot of apartments in this area closer to more jobs than apartments in Silver Spring, Olney, Wheaton, or Bethesda. The apartments closer to jobs are always going to fill up faster and command higher rents than the apartments that require long train rides or drives. The developers know this, and it makes them reluctant to build in Montgomery County.

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. 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.

Sigh.

You think that the county’s crumbling infrastructure is a fiction. So the most generous explanation is that you don’t live here.

Wasn’t that long ago that the YIMBY urbanists would claim that their policies were necessary to increase tax revenues to pay for our infrastructure needs. Now they just pretend that there’s no problem.

Because it's a cult.

Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

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. 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.

Sigh.

You think that the county’s crumbling infrastructure is a fiction. So the most generous explanation is that you don’t live here.

Wasn’t that long ago that the YIMBY urbanists would claim that their policies were necessary to increase tax revenues to pay for our infrastructure needs. Now they just pretend that there’s no problem.

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. 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.

Sigh.

You think that the county’s crumbling infrastructure is a fiction. So the most generous explanation is that you don’t live here.

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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. 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.

Sigh.