Numerous Constraints Limit the Availability of Developable Land

In my last post, I showed how new development can help us meet our environmental sustainability goals, including the county’s commitment to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions entirely by 2035 and reduce stormwater runoff into the Chesapeake Bay.

I also have discussed (here, here and here) the ways in which New Suburbanism adds needed housing while satisfying consumer demand for walkable urban places, even in areas that aren’t transit-oriented or adjacent to existing urban centers like Silver Spring and Bethesda.

Now I want to direct your attention to a related problem: While we know that we need to add more than 20,000 housing units over the next five years to accommodate additional … Continue reading

My last series of blog posts explained some of the challenges facing Montgomery County’s economy. I discussed how encouraging walkable, compact, mixed-use development can help us grow our tax base, control housing costs and improve the quality of life for all our residents. This “New Suburbanism,” however, is about more than economic competitiveness. It helps in addressing our most challenging environmental issues, including climate change and pollution from vehicle emissions and stormwater runoff.

Take a look at these charts from the Planning Department’s most recent Mobility Assessment Report:

Between 2005 and 2015, Montgomery County grew by more than 100,000 people. While our total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) has increased in the last … Continue reading

In the previous post I made the case that we need private infrastructure in the form of housing and office buildings for the same reasons we need public infrastructure such as roads, transit, schools, and water and sewer pipes. In particular, if we don’t have enough housing, workers will continue bidding up the cost of existing residences until only the very affluent will be able to afford decent housing in convenient locations. Lower-income residents will either be priced out entirely or face crowded, substandard housing conditions in remote locations with long and difficult commutes.

It may be possible to limit population growth by throttling the construction of new housing through regulation and higher fees on development (I’ll have more … Continue reading

I often hear people say things like:

“Real estate development just makes developers rich – it doesn’t do anything to help our economy,” or

“I understand why we need to bring more employers to Montgomery County, but building more housing just adds to the overcrowding of our schools – we should be pushing for more office projects,” or

“I’m not against growth but we shouldn’t allow more development until we have the infrastructure to support it.”

If you’ve read the previous posts in this series, you have some idea why I think these statements reflect mistaken premises about the relationship between real estate development and Montgomery County’s ability to attract high-quality jobs and the workers to fill them. The … Continue reading

In the previous two posts, I argued that we have a serious shortfall in the supply of new housing at every price level and that this drives up housing costs. Now I’ll take a look at retail and office space to try to offer some perspective on what’s going on in the market for commercial real estate and what it says about consumer preferences, our economic well-being, and what we can do to adapt to attract and retain employers and their employees in the future.

Our Retail and Office Markets

Even as many other parts of the country – and the DC region – are dealing with a glut of retail space, Montgomery County’s retail supply is, overall, strong … Continue reading

As I explained in my last post, Montgomery County’s continued population growth (even if this growth is slow in relative terms) coupled with constrained wages and housing supply, means that housing affordability becomes a bigger problem. This chart show the proportion of renters and homeowners with a mortgage who pay at least 35 percent of their income on housing costs:

The lack of affordable housing hurts the poor more than anyone else, but our high housing costs also hurt middle and even upper income residents. As for the impact on economic development and jobs, we risk driving away highly-skilled workers who have choices about where to live and work. Eventually, if we begin … Continue reading

In earlier posts, I outlined where Montgomery County stands in terms of jobs and wages, discussed the related issue of income inequality and pointed out that the older segment of our population is going to grow disproportionately to other age groups over the next two decades.

Now let’s assess the past and future rate of population growth, job openings and housing construction, and the relationship of these factors to lagging wage growth in contributing to one of most significant economic challenges: a shortage of affordable housing.

Population and job growth

Before we can evaluate how much new housing and office space is needed in the future, we first have to understand how many people (and jobs) we might reasonably … Continue reading