County Executive Marc Elrich
After councilmembers introduced a series of new housing proposals, County Executive Marc Elrich said the plan should be paused.
“I think it should be pulled,” Elrich said during a media briefing Wednesday. “I think in general, given what’s happening with the federal government and uncertainty about who’s going to have jobs and what’s going to happen if they don’t have jobs here, this county could very easily wind up with a whole lot of empty houses,” he said, noting threats of deportations and real job loss.
In January, County Councilmembers Andrew Friedson and Natali Fani-González announced the “More Housing N.O.W.” (New Options for Workers) package aimed at expanding housing and homeownership options for workers.
The plan would upzone properties along certain corridors “so they can be duplexes, they can be turned into triplexes, or small apartment buildings, to meet the reality, to meet the needs that we have today,” Fani-González said.
“This is an invitation to probably the most disorganized development that Montgomery County has ever seen,” Elrich said Wednesday.
Friedson said the package does not propose any zoning changes within residential neighborhoods.
Elrich said the plan “takes many miles of roadway in Montgomery County, rezones all the housing along the side of the roadway — technically, as the sponsor would say, it’s not a rezoning… but it changes what you can do in the zones.”
Press conference announcing “More Housing N.O.W.” package in January
When they announced the package, Friedson and Fani-González were joined in support by Council President Kate Stewart and Councilmembers Laurie-Anne Sayles, Marilyn Balcombe, and Dawn Luedtke, as well as advocates like a public school teacher and a firefighters union official.
“If you picture every house along Georgia Avenue or Connecticut Avenue or University Boulevard or Veirs Mill Road, each one has an individual owner,” Elrich said. “Unless every owner on a block decided to sell their housing to a developer, you would have individual owners deciding to build duplexes or triplexes on their lots.”
Elrich said there are things in the package he does not have a problem with, like expediting the permit process to go from an office building to a residential building. He said he does believe the county needs to look at workforce housing.
The councilmembers’ More Housing N.O.W plan includes five steps:
- Workforce housing Zoning Text Amendment (ZTA): To allow more residential options along corridors with a 15% workforce housing requirement
- Office-to-housing ZTA: To create an expedited approval process for turning high-vacancy commercial properties into housing
- Office-to-housing property tax abatement: To establish a 25-year property tax abatement for converting high-vacancy commercial properties into housing with affordability requirements
- Workforce housing opportunity fund: To create a new $4 million fund to incentivize workforce housing construction
- Budget investment: To double the Homeowner Assistance Program from $4 million to $8 million in the Fiscal Year 2026 Housing Initiative Fund
