One Way Of Solving The Urban/Suburban Housing Crisis

How do you make housing affordable? Build more affordable housing.

We need more affordable housing. That doesn’t mean affordable only to the upper-middle class and the wealthy. How about the plumber? The electrician? The single-parent, home-care nurse with 2 kids? They need affordable housing too.

A developer located in Rockville, MD, is building College Park Flats, two blocks from my house, using a combination of low income housing credits and the fact that due to the 2017 tax cuts, this area of College Park has been designated an opportunity zone. There used to be 3 motels: a Red Roof Inn, a Howard Johnson’s, and a Days Inn on that property. Those motels had existed on that parcel of land ever since I moved here in 1982. Over the years, they went from being middle of the road, comfortable lodging for out of towners coming to College Park for football games, and travelers going from point A to point B. Over the years, they became crime infested, and run down. The sound of gun shots coming from the motel area, following by the sirens of police units arriving at the scene, became quite commonplace. Those old motels have gone the way of the wrecking ball. The lots were cleared and construction has begun. Now there will be 317 apartments, mostly 2 and 3 bedroom units, averaging about 1100 square feet in size each. Most of the small, single-family homes in the neighborhood, mine included, are in the 900-1300 square footage range. Even though they are going to be in what is commonly called a 4 over 1: 4 floors of residential units above a ground floor of retail, the units are comparable in size to the single family homes in the neighborhood. It’s working class, and middle class housing, that is sorely needed.

Here’s a link to the article in the Hyattsville Wire, https://www.hyattsvillewire.com/2023/11/10/flats-college-park/#:~:text=Developers%20are%20planning%20an%20affordable,four%2Dacre%20site%20for%20decades.

For a 2 or 3 bedroom, 1121 square foot apartment, the rent will average about $1733 per month. For this area, that’s cheap. In the complex across the street, 1 bedrooms start around $1900/month. A 1200 square foot, 2 bedroom 2 bath unit starts at about $2700/month. That’s over $32,000/ year in rent!

The guidelines for developers using the low income housing tax credits to build the apartment complex, state that 20% of the residents have to make 50% of the Average Middle Income (AMI), $38,000/year, at least 40% have to make 60% of the AMI, $45,600, and no one above 80%, $60,800. The average AMI in College Park is $76,000 a year, slightly higher than the $73,000 national average. This is badly needed working class and lower-middle class housing.

Those of us who live in the residential single-family home neighborhoods behind this development, are mostly working, lower-middle, and middle-middle class. It’s just more of the same classes moving into the same classes’ neighborhoods. So what? It’s not, “There goes the neighborhood.”

Many of my neighbors are long-time residents of this city, myself included. My wife and I have lived in our house for 42 years, and counting. We are not planning on going anywhere. Some of our neighbors have lived here for 60 or 70 years. Most of them were against the development, even though the motels had become crime-infested, rundown eyesores. Some of the oldtimers, were against Metro too. They didn’t want “those people” coming into College Park. They wanted to keep the city the sleepy small Southern town that it always had been: a sleepy small, mostly redneck Southern town with a huge state university.

Not me. I like density. I’m a city person. I like the conveniences of the city, especially bus service and the Metro. I like the street festivals. When I can afford it, I like attending concerts at the Kennedy Center. A relaxing day for me, is to take the Metro downtown, and spend the day in a few of the museums; my favorite haunt being the National Gallery Of Art. I also like the idea of being car-optional. I’m not anti-car. As I get older, I would just like to use it a little bit less. I’m hoping the increased density will bring better bus service.

Prince George’s County, MD, is starting to gentrify. It’s about 30 years behind Montgomery County, but it’s finally densifying. Go into just about any residential neighborhood in Washington, DC. You will see a mixture of single family homes, duplexes, quads, row houses, and apartment buildings. You’ll see the same thing in Silver Spring, or Mt. Rainier, both in Maryland, on the border with DC. Same with the middle-ring suburbs of the nation’s capital. They can all go together. Even in the ‘burbs.’

We’ve built our share of luxury housing. It’s time to change the permitting and regulating rules, so that developers can make more of a profit building nice, comfortable housing for the middle classes. Yes, classes. The DC area is growing. It’s going to need a lot more affordable housing. Built it.