Abundance Agenda Starts Here in Montgomery County, MD
posted on in: housing, maryland, montgomery_county, abundance and agenda.
~196 words, about a 1 min read.
I live in Montgomery County, Maryland. It makes me incredibly proud that we are a leader in housing, in a blue state nontheless. Abdallah Fayyad of Vox writes:
Montgomery County has long prioritized affordable housing...But the county got creative with how it could provide public housing: It set aside a fund to finance and develop housing projects. And while the county partners with private developers, its investment makes it a majority owner of a given project. As the New York Times put it, the county, as an owner, becomes “a kind of benevolent investor that trades profits for lower rents
Branding around public housing is riddled with ideas around limited section 8 housing, poverty, underfunded neglected neighborhoods, and vouchers that have a wait time 20+ years.
leaders have coalesced around calling the mixed-income idea ‘social housing’ produced by ‘public developers,’” Cohen wrote. But in effect, the model is still publicly owned units being rented to residents at subsidized rates.
We have all the tools to address housing and do it in a smart effective way. What's more, notice this is a local county program -- not federal. Exciting indeed.