Please note that this subject is on the agenda for tonight’s (Monday, 9/18/06) Mayor and Council Meeting.

The analysis I’m trying to do here is a bit complicated, and I’ve been somewhat preoccupied by some other things. But here’s a few rough ideas regarding my thoughts on this topic.

The proposed ordinance can be found here. The full, formal title is:

ORDINANCE DECLARING A ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY (120) DAY DEFERRAL ON REDEVELOPMENT OF MULTI-FAMILY DWELLINGS IN THE R-18, R-20, R-H, CD, CBD, RPT, AND MXD ZONES

Now, this pretty quickly raises a few questions, e.g.:

  • Why only “redevelopment”, and why only redevelopment of “multi-family dwellings”?
  • Where can those seven zones be found?
  • Where can you find the multi-family dwellings that are likely to be redeveloped?

The first question is the tough one, and I’ll speculate a bit later. But second one is pretty straightforward. MXD is the “new urbanism” zone: Kentlands, Lakelands, Washingtonian/Rio, Casey East, etc. CD is “Corridor Development” — MD355, in a nutshell. CBD is “Central Business District”, or Olde Towne. R-18, R-20 and RP-T are medium density residential. R-H is high-density residential. Those zones are scattered all around, but there’s large pockets in the Travis/Watkins Mill, Clopper, Muddy Branch, Deer Park and Victory Farm. See the City’s current Zoning Map for more detail. I photoshopped the zoning map and tried to make all these zones red. It mostly works except that in the MXD zones especially, the street graphics overwhelm the red parts. But I think this does give an idea:

Deferral Zones

So that does sort of answer the second question — these zones are all over the City, but generally exclude low-density and a lot of the medium-density residential, with R-90 and R-A two of the major ones excluded.

The third question is harder but probably still knowable. Let’s break it into two pieces. First, what sorts of multi-family residential properties are likely to be “redeveloped”? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it probably isn’t condos, duplexes or townhouses. It could be one of those types, but I suspect that it would have to be pretty run down and/or largely abandoned, because otherwise a developer has to buy out, one by one, a whole bunch of individual homeowners. Possible, but hard.

What seems much more likely to me is that it would be an rental apartment complex. Since these properties are generally owned by a single entity, the purchase negotiations are much simpler. And in fact, we do know of several such properties for which redevelopment plans are in the works, such as West Deer Park, Broadstone (see the bit about the text amendment), and Ty Gwyn.

So let’s say that it’s apartments they are concerned about, and moreover, I think that we can speculate that it is older apartment complexes in particular — I suspect that relatively new buildings are pretty safe. So where are the apartments? Well, that’s harder, but still doable. And this is part of has been making me late with this. I have two major data sources for this. First is the City’s document entitled “Dwelling Units and Estimated Population“. This tells you, neighborhood by neighborhood and development by development, how many dwelling units exist, classified by “R” for rental, “C” for condo, “H” for homeowner’s association, and blank for (I assume) fee simple. The location of these neighborhoods is given by reference to the State’s Tax Map. If you want to explore the Tax Map, you can browse around in a locator map at this website. Be forewarned, the site is deathly slow. The point of that site is supposed to be so you can find the sectors you are interested in, and then you can order actual printed maps from the State, but for our purposes it works in and of itself. The vast majority of rental units listed in the “Dwelling Units” document are in the six tax map sectors FT341, FT342, FT343, FT561, FT562 and FT563, with a few also listed in FT122, FS563, FS123 and FS342 and ES563 (please correct me if I missed any). And where are these sectors? Here’s a crop of a screen grab from the tax map website:

tax map portion

But you probably already knew this, didn’t you. This really has almost nothing to do with MXD, and for the life of me I don’t know why they included that zone other than for appearances. No, this is really all about the run-down stuff that’s in CD and CBD, with a few strategic additions such as R-20 to cover things like Broadstone. This is where you’ll find the true “affordable housing” for which Gaithersburg is so well-known. This is where all the below-market units are, and where you will find a great many lower-income families, including many at or below the poverty line. And with the City almost completely built out, and the MXD well about to dry up, the pressure is on for developers to revisit the core. Unless the City does something, all that stuff will soon be wiped out and replaced with luxury apartments, condos, townhouses, etc. There’s even a chance that it could become an old-urbanism version of the new-urbanism Kentlands. And where will all the lower-income folks go when this happens? The same place the deer go when they bulldoze woodlands and build townhouses: Somewhere else.

So now, how do they plan to address this problem? Well, they want to develop an affordable housing policy that would require a certain percentage of MPDUs and/or workforce units to be built in each new development. (This will likely help people in the middle although it is arguable as to how much help it will offer to the families on the edge: those with Mom & Dad working three or four jobs together to pay the rent, or grandmothers getting by on Social Security.) But the affordable housing policy is controversial, and there is a serious split in the Council over this issue. With a number of other complex issues on their agenda, this could take quite a while to work out.

So they are considering this “deferral”, and in the deferral we start to gleen some of their true intentions. Generally, they are asking for redevelopment, especially along MD355 and Olde Towne, to just stop for four months. Developers are supposed to just sit, twiddling their thumbs while the Council figures out how big the penance is going to be for redeveloping in the core. But meanwhile, other than in Crown Farm where they’ve negotiated affordable housing into the annexation agreement, greenfield developent is still free — no affordable housing requirements whatsoever. So go ahead and develop in GE Tech Park, go ahead and find other infill things here and there, but hands off Olde Towne — it is important that we keep that run down and cheap, because we have to have somewhere for the poor people to live.

There are, of course, exceptions in the ordinance. If:

  • the particular redevelopment is in the public interest due to the ability to prevent or eliminate decay, slums or blight in a neighborhood; and
  • the redevelopment will no longer be feasible if subject to the one hundred twenty (120) day deferral; and
  • the imposition of the deferral will result in substantial financial hardship on the applicant

Then you get a pass. In other words, practice up on your whining skills. The other way out of this is if:

The City Council approves a binding agreement between the City and the property owner submitted by the property owner, to provide as part of the proposed development a minimum of seven and one half percent (7.5%) moderately priced dwelling units (defined as affordable to households earning at least seventy percent (70%) of area median income as calculated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”)) and seven and one half percent (7.5%) work force housing units (defined as affordable to households earning ninety percent (90%) of area median income as calculated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”)).

then you can go ahead. In other words, this ordinance implements your basic, garden variety affordable housing policy in a very small portion of the City, without any consideration of what is going on in the rest of the City. Again, this is all about protecting the run-down apartment buildings in the older parts of town. It has no effect on greenfield developments, and no effect on redevelopment that is not going to displace the occupants of old, run-down apartment buildings. For example, the now-under-construction “Carriage Homes at Summit Crossing” on North Summit Ave would not have been affected because, instead of redeveloping a multi-family dwelling, they bought up several single-family homes to get the land for this new multi-family dwelling. Thus, developers can continue assembling properties in other medium-density residential zones and redeveloping them as they see fit.

In the end, this deferral does absolutely nothing to encourage the production of affordable housing in the vast majority of the City, and instead acts to put the brakes on Olde Towne revitalization just as it is getting started. Personally, I think that this sucks.

One other indication of what they have in mind: In discussing the day laborer situation in a Council meeting recently, the City Manager noted that the County wanted the labor center in or near Olde Towne because that’s where the affordable housing is. It would appear that this is something they intend to persist for the long term.