The Montgomery County Council has solicited public input on a set of recommendations prepared by the Montgomery County Planning Department. Those recommendations are summarized in a report titled Attainable Housing Strategies. Among the recommendations is a proposal to allow by-right duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes in neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family housing. We the below-signed petitioners oppose this proposal. Our comments follow.

Developers as Beneficiaries

The elimination of by-right, single-family zoning is intended (according to the Web site) to “increase options for property owners to build more housing types in the county.”

The likely path forward to implement the strategy is that a single-family owner will list their home for sale, it will be purchased by a developer, and the developer will construct multifamily housing. The neighbors on either side of the home will have no recourse. Perhaps the Web site, in speaking of “property owners,” means “developers.” It cannot mean owner-occupants, who will derive no benefit from the implementation of this strategy. By contrast, the proposal has a clear benefit for developers.

Neighborhood Character

As likewise stated on the Web site, the elimination of by-right, single-family zoning is intended to “increase the number of units that [can] be built while maintaining neighborhood character.” This statement is indefensible. Allowing by-right multifamily housing in neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family housing is a strategy for changing neighborhood character, not maintaining it. In addition to undermining neighborhood character, increased density has negative implications for schools and government services.

Increased density also has implications for parking. We note that the report proposes to reduce parking requirements for developers building in single-family neighborhoods where on-street parking is available. Several of the neighborhoods targeted by this proposal are characterized by homes that lack off-street parking and whose owners will now face greater competition for already-scarce on-street spaces.

Lastly, many of the streets in the proposed area were not designed to handle bi-directional traffic when cars are parked on the road and require one direction of traffic to pull over allowing the other to pass. Any increase in traffic or parking density would create additional unsafe conditions, contrary to the county's Mission Zero initiative to reduce traffic fatalities. Increased on-street parking will also impede emergency vehicles. 

Attainability

Attainable Housing Strategies defines “attainability” as “the ability of households of various incomes and sizes to obtain housing that is suitable for their needs and affordable to them” (pg. 3). The report cites housing affordability as a problem to be solved. For example, the report states that “housing has become less affordable in all parts of Montgomery County” (pg. 12) and “Montgomery County’s single-family neighborhoods are becoming less and less attainable to households without high incomes or the privilege of generational wealth” (pg. 15).

Despite these references to affordability, the report does not assert or include data showing that eliminating by-right, single-family zoning is an effective strategy for improving affordability. It states, for example, that “it is impossible to estimate or model in advance the precise size of the attainable housing market because no builder in the region has redeveloped existing single-family homes into duplexes, triplexes, or quadplexes in many decades” (pg. 77). In fact, some studies have found that “upzoning” increases property values, particularly when the primary beneficiaries of upzoning are speculative developers [“Zoning Change: Upzonings, Downzonings, and Their Impacts on Residential Construction, Housing Costs, and Neighborhood Demographics,” Jonah Freemark, Journal of Planning Literature].

Existing Owner-Occupants

The report speaks pejoratively of existing owner-occupants, decrying the fact that trends in home price values “provide tremendous benefits to current landowners who increase their wealth as home values surge” (pg. 15). It perhaps bears stating that existing owner-occupants are Montgomery County taxpayers who cover the salaries of those who prepared this report, as well as those who are in a position to implement its recommendations.

Existing owner-occupants may experience an increase in home values as a result of upzoning, as some reports suggest. Alternatively, owner-occupants may experience a loss in value commensurate with the negative effects of increased density. Given that the elimination of by-right, single-family zoning cannot be shown or estimated to serve a legitimate public purpose, it is reasonable to question why the Montgomery County Council would pursue such a policy. As the only certain beneficiaries are speculative developers, it is likewise reasonable to question whether their influence over the process, for example as participants on the Housing Equity Advisory Team, was determinative.

We request that the Council reject the proposal to eliminate by-right, single-family zoning in neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family housing.