Md. House set to tweak Moore’s plan to spur affordable housing

House Democrats this week are expected to roll back parts of Gov. Wes Moore‘s plan for tackling what he and other top officials have called a “housing crisis” in Maryland.

The governor has said Maryland is facing a shortage of 96,000 units that will continue to worsen by several thousand units per year without policy intervention.

His administration has received broad support for its housing bills, including for incentivizing housing with affordable units in nonprofit projects, on historic state-owned land and near rail stations.

The state would allow developers to build denser housing projects, and do so more quickly, if they include a certain percentage of affordable units.

But, some county and municipal officials and state residents have contended that one of the governor’s policy proposals went too far in limiting local control over state-funded projects.

Havre de Grace Mayor William Martin, among the officials most staunchly opposed, wrote that preventing local officials from denying or restricting projects because of their impact on local infrastructure and services would “jeopardize the safety, well-being and quality of life for all Marylanders.”

RELATED: Md. House passes Moore’s renter protections proposal

While some local officials and the Maryland Association of Counties sought flexibility, House Democrats opted to abandon Moore’s proposal to prevent local governments from using their adequate public facilities ordinance — meant to ensure that services like schools, emergency services, roads and water can keep pace with growth — to deny permits or impose unreasonable restrictions on state affordable housing projects.

The broader proposal, which House members are expected to debate this week, should be hailed as “an enormous step forward” for “anybody who cares about housing affordability in the state,” state Del. Vaughn Stewart, who has led the proposal through the House, said in a phone interview.

“We’ll see what the Senate does, but I think the House version represents a very modest step in the right direction of more housing,” said Stewart, a Montgomery County Democrat.

State senators are expected to take up the proposal after it passes the House in the coming days.

House members plan to tweak other portions of the bill, like decreasing from one mile to three-quarters of a mile the distance from a rail station a development must be to qualify for a density bonus.

Lawmakers plan to lower, from 50% to 25%, the number of affordable units to qualify for a density bonus the state will require of projects owned by a nonprofit or built on historic state land.

“One of the pieces of feedback we heard was that some of those targets may be so high that no actual projects will come about as a result of the bill,” Stewart said. “By requiring so much affordability, we’d end up with nothing.”

Del. Marc Korman, who chairs the committee through which the governor’s housing proposals passed, said lawmakers must find the right mix of market-price units versus affordable units to ensure the policy encourages development.

“These are market-driven projects,” Korman, a fellow Montgomery County Democrat, said in a phone interview.

Lowering housing costs in a state with a growing shortage of available units and a rising median home price has been a priority for the governor this session.

Over the last decade, in the wake of the 2008 financial and housing crises and — more recently — amid pandemic-era inflation, Maryland’s housing shortage has increased at an annual rate of 5,600 units, according to the governor’s office.

The administration proposed three housing bills, intended to encourage housing construction, improve state financing tools for housing and community development, and bolster protections for renters.

The House has passed two of the bills, one of which increases Maryland’s eviction filing fee and establishes a tenant’s right of first refusal.

The second bill forms a Maryland Community Investment Corp., which the administration pitched as a way for the state to compete for tens of millions of dollars in federal funding and invest it in low-income communities and local development projects.

It remains to be seen where House and Senate leaders will agree and differ on the governor’s housing proposals. Lawmakers have little more than two weeks, until April 8, to pass the bills in some form.