Residents in the River Road and Massachusetts Avenue corridors of Bethesda will protest the effort by the Montgomery County Council to ram through a zoning text amendment (ZTA) to upzone their neighborhoods for multifamily housing tomorrow afternoon, Monday, July 7, 2025, from 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Jamestown Road. The ZTA is a "bill of goods" being disingenuously sold by County Councilmember Andrew Friedson as a solution to the high cost of housing, when in actuality, the higher-density it would allow will be market rate luxury housing sold at $1 million and upward. Part of the highly-controversial "Thrive 2050" scam the Council rammed through during the pandemic, the ZTA is branded as "More Housing N.O.W."
When residents from Bethesda, Wheaton, and other communities that will be damaged and bulldozed by the ZTA turned out in force at the first worksession on the proposal, Friedson took notice. He canceled the second scheduled worksession, and is now rushing the ZTA for a vote before the full Council while many are out of town for summer vacations.
What the ZTA will do is to upzone neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family homes only, to allow the construction of multifamily homes. These would include duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes, and apartment buildings. Street parking and school classrooms would be overwhelmed by a massive influx of new vehicles and children. With all of the new multifamily housing selling at market rates, the ZTA is designed only to line the pockets of the developers who have contributed to the political campaigns of Friedson and other councilmembers, and will not lower the cost of housing whatsoever.
14 comments:
I've heard many people talk about this with great concern. This is yet another example of extreme government overreach in an effort to engender diversity, equity, and inclusion. Social engineering never work yet Montgomery County Council never tires of doing so.
We need both more housing and more affordable housing. Allowing duplexes and triplexes in single family neighborhoods seems like a smart idea. Too many NIMBY’s in their large single family homes on large lots do not have the right to preserve this inefficient form of land use. Remember that the maximum lot coverage, setbacks, building height are not increased by this beyond what is already permitted on these single family lots. It just means that more folks get to enjoy these wide open suburbs.
In the past, most families had more children than they do now, so having another few bedrooms in a separate granny flat, duplex or triplex really should not really change the functionality of the neighborhood. I do wish the ordinance would require more off street parking to reduce the likely increase in street parking. Schools and parks can be expanded or added by the massive school impact payments and park impact payments that these will generate.
Wouldn’t most folks prefer this to endless suburban sprawl into undeveloped areas further and further from the urban core? Of course this should be combined with more high- density, market rate and affordable housing built close to public transit in walkable downtowns like Bethesda nd Silver Spring.
7:31 - Are you in favor of the NJ government taking, by eminent domain, a family farm in Cranberry which has been in the same family for almost a 100 years which has benefited the community and harmed no one in any way? Just curious. This is wacko Moco one party government overreach government intrusion land 101. Great job! Electing Marc Elrich who has close to 4 years still left to go as County exec. And lastly, would you have been in favor of the county erecting a home for unwed mothers and their children in the hill Mead neighborhood in Bethesda which was proposed a decade or so ago and thankfully quashed? Because this idea is not too terribly different from the ones that I described here
A reply to Anonymous at 7:30 a.m. this morning. I guess we are considered a NIMBY whatever that is. We live in a single family home and raised seven children there. And now they are all grown up and it is my wife and I. So clearly we fall under your category of "wasted space", ripe for a rezone into multiple family dwellings.
You are an advocate for affordable housing and so are we. But let's do the math. The current trend in Bethesda is to purchase 1/4 acre lots for approximately $1-1.5m dollars with an old home that gets razed. Let's say you wish to put up an "affordable" duplex. An average size of 2,500 sq. ft. each because this is easily done on the footprint of the lot. The average cost of new construction Bethesda is $450 per square foot. That brings the construction cost for the duplex to $2.25m. Add that to the cost of the lot and you are in for $3.5m. An average return on investment for a developer, all costs in considered in Bethesda, would be about 10% to 15%. So you would need to sell this for up to $4m or $1.75-$2m per unit. WHAT IS AFFORDABLE HERE?!! Your altruistic goal falls way short of the reality in this corridor.
I have a different suggestion. High-rise apartment buildings and condominiums are going up all over Bethesda. I'm not sure who the developers think will be the tenants. But many of them are 1 and 2 bedrooms. Perhaps if these developers should consider condominiums with somewhat larger square footage and room numbers that were better suited for young families with one or two children. Purchasing this condominium could be their start of "affordable" housing. Later to sell that for a profit to move into a single family home. And as a condominium complex it might come with a number of amenities that many single family homes don't have like a gym or a pool.
Thrive 2050 it's a very flawed plan and Friedson and other MCO council members should listen to the extremely negative feedback in those public meetings thus far and come up with different alternatives. Don't shove this through on a summer fast track or without more public input. Meanwhile, as a NIMBY, I continue to pay outrageous Montgomery County property taxes in excess of $20,000/yr which have not even been factored into the exercise laid out above.
And to your comment "Too many NIMBY’s in their large single family homes on large lots do not have the right to preserve this inefficient form of land use.", I would simply say that after you have saved up your hard-earned money over 20-30 years to buy a single family home and enjoy it with your family for many years, who the hell are you to tell me that I have "no right" to live in it for as long as I determine. I am not the solution to Montgomery County's housing problem. We have elected officials and they should come up with alternatives that actually makes sense. Or elect new ones.
LM - That's a master class worthy rebuttal. Wow!
Thanks LM! A voice of reason, reality, and bona fide numbers. They always seem to know what's best for us, and they're predominantly wrong, misguided, and / or corrupt (Raskin comes to mind). We keep electing and empowering them, tho!
Leaving is so easy unless you can't find the door.
@9:40 the problem with leaving is that liberals also migrate and vote for the same things that made them leave in the first place.
Why would this not lower the cost of housing?
Q: Who the hell are you to tell me I have "no right" to live in it for as long as I determine. -
A: a liberal Democrat
You MoCo idiots need to stop voting for these people.
1:21: Because thousands of new housing units being delivered in Bethesda over the last decade has not lowered the cost of housing. This is a developer money grab, pure and simple.
Of course single family home owners have the right to stay in their home as long as they want. No one is forcing them to move. But as a NIMBY you seem to insist that all others in your neighborhood do the same thing. Not fair to folks that believe a small amount of multifamily duplex’s and triplexes would be a great way to add density. You assume a 2500 SF home would only be replaced by two 2500 duplexes. Why not build two 1250 SF duplexes or three 750 SF triplexes, and sell them for a more affordable price? Your idea is great to build “starter” highrise condos, with lots of bedrooms and amenities would be great, but very expensive due to the cost of high rise construction being several times higher than a simple, wood framed, two story duplex or triplex. We need all types of housing including market rate apartments and condos, market rate single family homes, and more affordable wood framed duplex’s and triplexes. Even some townhouses and townhouses along the edges as buffered to the higher density downtown areas.
Of course most residential developers are in business to make as much money as they can, and not save the world with affordable housing. The highest and best use of any given piece of land in or near downtown Bethesda, an affluent community, means that new affordable housing is not as profitable as market rate housing. Allowing duplexes or triplexes on single family home sites is only a small part of the solution, but might help.
4:07 didn't listen to a thing you said, LM. If the total cost of the build out is $4 mil., and he suggests 2 duplexes, well then each unit would cost $1 mil each, hardly 'affordable'. There really is no one so blind as one who refuses to see.
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