preserving the quality of life in Olney, Maryland

Is It the Job of MCPS to Provide Affordable Housing?

Testimony of Wayne Goldstein before Board of Education on Request for School Sites
March 3, 2004

I'm Wayne Goldstein, representing the Montgomery County Civic Federation Housing Committee. I'm also a member of the Civic Federation Education Committee and tonight I believe those two interests are working together.

County Executive Duncan wants MCPS to do its part to help create more affordable housing by surplusing several school sites. The problem is that Mr. Duncan, through his employee Elizabeth Davison, Director of the Department of Housing and Community Affairs. has not been doing his part to create more affordable housing. One might say that Mr. Duncan is asking MCPS to assume responsibility for doing what he has failed to do.

The failure is that Ms. Davison has approved the buyout of over 200 Moderately Priced Dwelling Units. These MPDUs could have provided the workforce housing that MCPS now feels compelled to try to create. Ms. Davison has allowed builders to pay as little as $20,000 to be free of the responsibility of building an MPDU that costs them $120,000. This money has been used to renovate some existing affordable housing units but has created little additional affordable housing, as the law governing buyouts requires.

Last Thursday, I asked our Planning Board to not approve an apartment project in West Bethesda that would include the buyout of 48 more MPDUs, affordable housing that will not be built in that planning area, if at all, particularly when each buyout will yield the princely sum of $33,000.

Soon, The Quarry project in Potomac will go before the Planning Board, likely asking to buy out of its obligation of 12 MPDUs that also won't be built in Potomac or anywhere else.

In effect, the responsibility for those 60 MPDUs in or near Potomac will be made your responsibility. You should feel no obligation to accept that burden. If Ms. Davison hadn't let so many MPDUs be lost and Mr. Duncan was asking you to follow his good example, you would have a legitimate challenge to consider meeting.

That is not the case by a long shot. The Superintendent is a wonderfully dynamic and creative force for educational excellence, but I'm wondering if he would be pushing his ideas for workforce housing and deals with developers if Mr. Duncan had not sought to make MCPS responsible in this way.

A number of parents in this room are rightfully opposed to and skeptical of any plan to give up irreplaceable school sites for another purpose. This is not a swap; it is a permanent loss that is being considered. Here is one request you could make during your deliberations:

When Mr. Duncan and Ms. Davison tell you where and when they will build the 300 lost Bethesda and Potomac MPDUs, then you will give serious consideration to the request for these school sites.

Wayne Goldstein
Montgomery County Civic Federation Housing Committee
waynemgoldstein@hotmail.com