Attainable Housing Strategies initiative

Attainability is the ability of households of various incomes and sizes to obtain housing that is suitable for their needs and affordable to them. Implicit in this idea of attainability is the idea that a range of housing options (type, size, tenure, cost) exists in the local market. Attainable housing includes diverse housing types beyond single-family detached units that tend to be smaller and more affordable than the typical new detached home in that neighborhood.

Attainable Housing includes, but is not limited to, Missing Middle Housing. Learn more about Missing Middle Housing in Montgomery County.

Zoning changes can come in the form of a map amendment, which changes the designation of land from one zone and set of uses to another, or a zoning text amendment, which changes how a zone is defined, the uses allowed in a zone, or how development standards and zoning in general are applied. Any Zoning Text Amendment (ZTA) resulting from the Attainable Housing Strategies Initiative would entail at least two public hearings (one held by the Planning Board and one held by the Montgomery County District Council), as well as worksessions before any changes are made. Learn more about the Zoning Text Amendment Process.

If a ZTA is adopted by the District Council, it would not require any landowner to change how their property is used. It would only allow landowners to build different types of units on their properties—but there is no obligation to do so.

Through the Attainable Housing Strategies Initiative, the Planning Department will provide additional opportunity for public input and return to the County Council a series of recommendations through a report, that will highlight opportunities to create more opportunities for Attainable Housing.

On February 22, 2024, Planning Staff will brief the Planning Board on the recommendations on the initiative made by the previous Planning Board. The Planning Board will then offer the community the ability to provide public comment on the initiative on March 21, 2024. Planning staff then anticipates that the Planning Board will want to hold its own work sessions on the initiative, and Planning Staff has tentatively scheduled 6 work sessions with the Planning Board.

The culmination of the effort will result in a report to the County Council on recommended actions to spur more diverse housing types through the county.

The preliminary Attainable Housing Strategies recommendations would require property owners looking to build a duplex, triplex or quadplex to follow a pattern book to proceed by-right. The pattern book will provide direction on massing, orientation, scale, and parking concepts for different housing types on different size parcels, to ensure these housing types are house scaled. Also, the preliminary recommendations maintain existing height and setback standards to ensure the structures are consistent in scale with single-family homes. Finally, we do not expect mass transformation of neighborhoods in a short time, since the new home types will take some time to be built and most of our neighborhoods have a mature housing stock which will not be converted rapidly.

The preliminary Attainable Housing Strategies recommendations would allow small apartment buildings only along BRT Corridors plus River Road and Connecticut Avenue. These would not be allowed by-right, but only through the new attainable housing optional method of development, which would require a site plan review by the Planning Board and provide an opportunity for public comments.

The preliminary Affordable Housing Strategies recommendations do not eliminate parking minimums but would reduce parking requirements by half and allow further reduction of parking requirements in the Priority Housing District.

The Attainable Housing Strategies initiative focuses on spurring the production of more diverse types of market rate housing that is more affordable than the typical new single-family home, generally due to their smaller size. Prices for attainable housing may vary in different parts of the county, given different market realities in the county. However, give the impact that size and type have on affordability, the types of homes proposed as part of the Affordable Housing Strategies initiative would make owning a home in higher-priced neighborhoods more attainable to more residents.

SDAT values land and improvements separately. However, when referring to increases in assessment SDAT typically refers to the total value of the property.   The impact to total value can only follow market trends.

The State Department of Taxation (SDAT) is responsible for assessing the value of property within the State of Maryland. Local municipalities and governmental bodies then set tax rates that are applied to those valuations to generate tax revenue. SDAT follows the market to determine property value, using verified sales for comparable properties of the same use within a neighborhood to determine the assessed values of properties. Because SDAT follows market trends and sets assessed values based on sales of similar properties, the agency would not automatically increase the assessment of single-family homes as a result of a zoning change that changes the development potential of a class of properties.

SDAT re-assesses single-family home properties if they are subdivided into new lots, if the owner builds a new structure on the site, or if the use of the property changes (i.e., from residential to commercial). If a property were to redevelop into a new home or even a multi-unit property it would not directly affect the assessed values of neighboring homes that were not involved in the development.

Indirectly, assessed values may change over time as market conditions for single-family homes change in the neighborhood. SDAT re-assesses all properties in the state on a 3-year rolling cycle to keep current the estimated fair market values. If SDAT identified a consistent trend of higher sales values for homes in a neighborhood that would result in the assessed value of properties in that area increasing. However, that outcome of higher assessed values would follow identifiable data indicating the market value of properties.

In sum, a policy change such as allowing multiple units to be built in single-family zones may or may not result in increased assessed value for properties subject to that policy. SDAT can only follow the market trends.

Similarly, based on conversations with Montgomery County’s Office of Management and Budget, the tax rates applied by the county to the assessed values of residential properties are based on the actual use, not the potential use as allowed by zoning.

The Planning Board defined the Priority Housing District as the area in which quadplexes would be allowed and parking requirements would be reduced. The Board recommends delineating the Priority Housing District using a straight-line buffer of 1-mile from Red line, Purple Line, and MARC rail stations, plus 500 ft from a BRT Corridor plus River Road and Connecticut Avenue.

The Attainable Housing Optional Method (AHOM) is a new optional method of development, which provides opportunities to assemble lots and construct medium scale attainable housing which includes cottage courtyard housing, stacked flats, small apartment buildings, and townhouses. The AHOM would apply to certain properties in the R-90, R-60 and R-40 zones. While the Planning Board has not recommended a geographic applicability yet, staff is recommending that the AHOM apply to sites within the R-90, R-60 and R-40 zones that abut a corridor planned for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) through the 2013 Countywide Transit Corridors Functional Master Plan.  A qualifying site may be made up of multiple properties including ones that previously did not abut a qualifying right-of-way but do after property consolidation.