Guest Blog from Margery Austin Turner of the Urban Institute
After several years of exceptionally fast-paced expansion, the Washington region’s growth has moderated, and housing market pressures are easing. Nonetheless, the regional economy remains strong, and average sales prices are high. For low- and moderate-income residents home prices and rents remain out of reach, and housing affordability pressures continue to place too many people at risk of homelessness. Finding a suitable and affordable place to live is especially difficult for people who need special design features or supportive services, such as people with physical and mental disabilities, elderly people who can no longer live independently, and individuals and families who have been homeless.
Today, the Washington region stands on the brink of an impending surge in the number of residents with special housing needs. As the region’s population with special needs expands, growing numbers are likely to struggle to cover unaffordable costs for in-home care, and will face long waiting lists for publicly-funded services or supportive housing units, and become institutionalized unnecessarily, and even experience periods of homelessness. But if the region’s leaders begin to plan and work together now — in anticipation of the coming wave of special housing needs — they can expand the range of linked housing and service choices offered by the private sector, develop more effective public programs, and ensure that options are affordable for people of all incomes across the region.
-- Margery Austin Turner
Do you see affordable housing for people with special needs becoming an issue in Montgomery County? Or is the County already tackling the problem effectively?
To hear Turner speak more on this ver issue, come to the Montgomery County Planning Department's "Excellence in Planning Speaker" series, tonight, May 8 at 7:30 p.m.



On April 17, Montgomery County Planning Department staff presented a 
On March 20, urban policy author and consultant, David Rusk spoke about affordable housing to an audience that included the Montgomery County Planning Board. Addressing a county that, in 1973, adopted one of the first—and arguably the most successful—inclusionary zoning programs in the country, he focused mainly on Montgomery County’s MPDU (moderately priced dwelling unit) program. He was persistently positive and supportive of the County’s efforts to address housing affordability thus far, but opened by saying that as one of the early pioneers of this program, mistakes were bound to be made. In commending the County on work to date, he also presented recommendations for improving the program by looking to other cities and counties that use mandatory inclusionary zoning. Out of the more than 400 cities and counties with mandatory inclusionary zoning, Rusk stated that of the 90,000 to 95,000 total inclusionary units, approximately 12,000 (roughly 1 out of 8) units were created in Montgomery County. Despite serving what he called “more extremely low income families” than any other inclusionary zoning program and having “the best urban government in America,” He highlighted room for improvement in the County.


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