Why Montgomery’s affordable housing “dumping ground” could use even more

Since the 1970s, Montgomery County has required developers to set aside a percentage of new homes for their Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit (MPDU) program. Nevertheless, affluent Bethesda and Potomac have fought MPDUs, resulting in a concentration of subsidized units elsewhere in the County. Today, a quarter of the county’s MPDUs are located in Germantown, while another eleven percent can be found in the East County areas of White Oak and Briggs Chaney.

Those communities seen as a “dumping ground” for affordable housing are now on the defensive. The county’s plans to build mixed-income housing next to a new police station in White Oak, north of Downtown Silver Spring, have met “heavy opposition.” A presentation to the local civic association in August “dissolved into shouted questions” from the roughly 125 people attending about traffic and crime. At another meeting in June, I heard residents say affordable housing creates “open-air drug markets” and that a “better quality of people” should live in the neighborhood.

“Our lives are defined by the fact that White Oak is White Oak,” lamented one woman at that meeting. Is this the right attitude for those who say they’ve already gotten their share of Montgomery County’s less fortunate? While their frustration has merit, residents are taking the wrong approach to improving the area’s reputation. It’s not just that housing makes total sense on the proposed site, a wooded twelve-acre parcel near the intersection of Columbia Pike and New Hampshire Avenue within walking distance to several bus routes, the FDA campus, a library, four schools, several parks, and soon a recreation center. What the county’s Department of Housing and Community Affairs wants to build there is unlike any affordable housing this area’s seen before.

Few seem to understand what affordable housing is or where it’s available. The majority of the apartments in White Oak and Briggs Chaney are not subsidized, but some may be rented using federal Section 8 vouchers. Subsidized units are managed either by the Department of Housing and Community Affairs, which offers homes for rent or for sale, or the non-profit Housing Opportunities Commission.

Rick Nelson, head of the Department of Housing and Community Affairs, has tried to set the record straight on his agency’s proposals. “The problem of crime and drugs is not endemic to affordable housing,” said Nelson at the meeting in June. “It’s prevalent in communities with a concentration of low-income housing.” As a result, the White Oak development would include market-rate homes and workforce housing aimed at households making less than 120% of the County’s median income, or $120,000 a year, in addition to traditional MPDUs.

DHCA’s first workforce housing project is a condominium, a converted apartment complex in Rockville called the Village at King Farm. Here, buyers on a priority list culled from current MPDU residents, government employees, and “first responders” can purchase large, townhouse-style units at prices ranging from $207,500 to $377,500 based on unit size and household income. They aren’t allowed to rent the homes out; when they sell, owners must give 15% of the profits to the County. But in return, they have a home with hardwood floors and granite countertops in a convenient, desirable location near the Shady Grove Metro station.

In White Oak, DHCA is proposing two schemes, one with 93 apartments and another with 77 townhomes. Both plans were created by Torti Gallas and Partners — one of the premier firms doing multi-family homes in the region, if not the nation. These are not only well-laid out but attractive as well. This is not the “affordable housing” — subsidized or unsubsidized — we’ve seen in East County before, where buildings float in a no-man’s land of parking lots and common lawns that are neither functional nor safe. As architect Erik Aulestia explained, the goal for this and any projects like it is to create neighborhoods where “you can’t tell the difference between a market-rate subdivision.”

The apartment scheme uses less land, but it’s a less-than-ideal fit for a site surrounded by lower-density housing in a neighborhood with a strong aversion to that building type. Its two multi-story buildings allow for larger buffers from the street and from single-family homes in the adjacent Sherbrooke subdivision. But it also requires more surface parking, creating a “dead zone” that is neither attractive to be in or easy to defend. In this scheme, a proposed neighborhood green is surrounded by the apartments, forming a space that feels like it belongs to those homes alone.

As I’ve written before, the townhouse option would be the best fit for the site, providing a transition between the high-rise apartments to the south and the single-family homes to the north. Aulestia referred to the streets in the plan as “friendly streets,” designed as much for the car as it is for the pedestrian. Sidewalks are plentiful. Buildings face greens and squares instead of culs-de-sac. The result is an inviting, pedestrian-friendly community - one that identifies with Sherbrooke, rather than turning its back on them. There’s even a neighborhood green accessible to both subdivisions.

Rather than trying to stall an attractive, well-designed residential development, White Oak residents should be pushing to improve the area’s real blight: the White Oak Shopping Center, a nearly half-million-square foot strip mall across Columbia Pike. Filled with fast-food joints and beauty parlors, it’s a place perceived as unsafe after dark where even the Starbucks closed for lack of traffic. Instead of pointing fingers at lower-income residents, this community should be trying to attract what we don’t have enough of, like high-end shopping, white-collar jobs, and rapid transit. Those who would buy the high-end homes we want here aren’t going to pay top dollar for a location with a horrible commute and nowhere nice to eat.

Passing through White Oak, it’s hard to imagine that homes on the winding side streets around it sell for upwards of a million dollars. Or that in the 1930s, developers called this area “a community of country estates” and “aristocratic,” attempting to set this area as the more exclusive part of Silver Spring. These neighborhoods, where average household incomes topped $90,000 in the 2000 census, have the demographics that attract steakhouses and bookstores. Not to mention, of course, those with lower incomes willing to consume high-end goods. Just count the number of expensive cars outside the apartment buildings on Lockwood Drive. People want nice things no matter how much money they make, and they sure aren’t finding them here. Reducing housing choices in White Oak won’t do anything to improve the congestion or lack of nearby amenities that affect everyone, rich or poor.