Montgomery County Faces Pushback On 'Landmark' Housing Package

Montgomery County lawmakers are preparing to vote Tuesday on a proposal to upzone a wide swath of land for multifamily housing as a way to tackle the affordability crisis in the wealthy suburban community. 

The proposal, Zoning Text Amendment 25-02, is a key piece of the More Housing N.O.W. package of reforms introduced earlier this year by Councilmembers Natali Fani-González and Andrew Friedson.

The council passed prior pieces of the package in April, but it has faced opposition from County Executive Marc Elrich and from residents worried about the effects that higher-density housing could have on their neighborhoods.

More than 1 million people reside in Montgomery County, and about 35% of its households rent, with more than half of those renters classified as cost-burdened. Its median home price is $632K.

“We have to acknowledge that we have a problem that Montgomery County, like jurisdictions all over the region and throughout the country, is completely unaffordable to most average, normal, hardworking people who have good jobs,” Friedson told Bisnow. 

“Exactly what is the best solution to solve these issues, there is still discussion and debate on that,” he added. “And I think it’s healthy for us to have a discussion.”

The proposal up for approval on Tuesday would change the county's zoning to allow duplexes, triplexes and apartment buildings up to 40 feet tall on many properties that today only allow single-family housing.

The upzoning would apply to properties abutting the more than 25 roadways that are at least 100 feet wide and have at least three traffic lanes. They include sites along main corridors that connect the county's commercial hubs and lead into D.C., such as Wisconsin Avenue, Connecticut Avenue, Georgia Avenue, Massachusetts Avenue, Old Georgetown Road and University Boulevard. 

In order to take advantage of the upzoning, owners building three or more units need to designate a certain number of units as workforce housing, meaning it is affordable to those making between 70% and 120% of the area median income. A three-unit building would require one such dwelling, while larger multifamily buildings would need to be 15% workforce housing.

These owners would also need their plans approved by a board that ensures they stay within the bounds of the law. 

Carrie Kisicki, the Montgomery County advocacy manager for pro-housing group Coalition for Smarter Growth, said requiring property owners to go through an approval process would make these multifamily projects take more time and money to pursue. But she supports the overall proposal because it creates a pathway to building more housing on lots that have long been restricted to detached single-family homes. 

“We’re still living in that world where people who 10 or 20 years ago would’ve been able to buy a starter home, or young professionals who would’ve been able to buy an apartment in the county, started to not be able to do that because of how little we’ve been building the types of housing that people needed,” Kisicki said.

“So this is to me a landmark package because it shows we’re willing to go back and look at some of those things we’ve taken for granted about where we build homes or don’t build homes.”

But as is often the case with plans for allowing denser housing, this proposal has generated substantial opposition. 

Hundreds of residents gathered Wednesday at Odessa Shannon Middle School in Silver Spring for a town hall with Fani-González.

The councilmember organized the meeting to discuss the University Boulevard Corridor Plan, a master plan for that area that the council is slated to consider in the fall. But some attendees also spoke out in opposition to the zoning amendment being voted on Tuesday, according to Kimblyn Persaud, executive director of community group EPIC of MoCo — Empowering People in Communities of Montgomery County — which opposes the rezoning.

Her group's members are concerned that allowing developers to build denser housing along these corridors would lead to displacement of existing residents and that the new housing wouldn't be affordable, Persaud said. She said she isn't opposed to building more housing in general, but she said that can be done on vacant lots rather than on properties where people own single-family homes. 

“There’s plenty of property that’s open that people can build on. That’s not a problem,” Persaud said. “But you’re taking established communities, established homes, people who have been in their homes, who have begged and borrowed to get in the American dream. And with the swipe of a pen, you’re putting us on the line to be dismantled.” 

Existing homeowners would be able to keep their properties as is without adding density or selling to a developer, but Friedson said this zoning change would give property owners the freedom to add another unit or two if they want.

And he said many of the single-family houses along major corridors are vacant because people don't want to live in those types of homes on busy roads.

“Change is difficult. Housing is hard,” Friedson said when asked about the opposition. “We are working diligently to try to be thoughtful and methodical to make meaningful progress and not let perfection be the enemy of progress, to address concerns as we can when they are reasonable, and to try to move forward and build consensus.”

The proposal has also drawn critique from the county executive, who doesn't have veto power over zoning amendments but nevertheless released a memo to the council last month voicing his opposition to the plan. 

Elrich argued that such a broad, countywide upzoning is a poor way to plan for housing growth and that it should instead be done with neighborhood-level master plans that allow for more community input.

“I would urge you to return to planning via the master plan process rather than changing residential zones in many parts of the county outside of that process,” he wrote. 

These master plans are rewritten for a given neighborhood every 15 to 20 years, which advocates of the zoning amendment say is too slow of a process to address the urgency of the housing shortage. But Elrich said prior master plans have allowed some areas to have higher-density development that has yet to be built.  

In April, Elrich vetoed another piece of the More Housing N.O.W. package: a tax incentive for developers that convert vacant office buildings to residential. But the county council voted to override his veto. The incentive is now law, and the council also passed a zoning amendment to accelerate the approval process for these conversions. 

Council Vice President Will Jawando was the lone lawmaker to vote against the tax incentive proposal. He also led the opposition in January to a prior package of housing reforms, the Attainable Housing Strategies Initiative, which would have effectively ended single-family-only zoning in the county.

That package, approved by the Montgomery County Planning Board, generated widespread backlash and was ultimately abandoned by the council. This led Friedson and Fani-González to propose the More Housing N.O.W. package as an alternative that focuses its multifamily zoning on main corridors.

Tuesday's vote won't be the last word on the issue. Jawando and Friedson have each announced runs to replace Elrich as county executive ahead of the June 2026 primary, teeing up a debate on the future of the county's housing policies.

CORRECTION, JULY 21, 8:25 P.M. ET: A previous version of this story incorrectly described Wednesday's town hall meeting. This story has been updated.