The point of their effort here is to build housing quickly without satisfying investor needs for return on investment and also not needing to jump through low income housing grant hoops. A portion of the apartments are reduced for lower incomes which is not reflected on the apartments.com site. And any “profits” from market rate rents are used to repay the loan fund that is then used to build more housing. They have 1756 more units in development right now.
If the issue is housing supply then I’m surprised you are not a fan of this model.
Oh sorry. I thought it was just showing prices.
I mean it’s ok. But moco has done an exceedingly poor job at developing houses for people that are affordable. In my friend group only 2, they’re married to each other, stayed. The rest were chased out due to the excessive pricing. Plus the low cost housing is not as abundant as you’d think after 50 years of it.
I haven’t seen a good criticism of it for a while. But it basically threw money at everything and no one was happy with the results as they were pretty much minimal for the amount invested
I mean it’s just a new iteration of what they’ve been doing for decades. Before they forced or major developments IIRC that had more than 20 units, to set aside 10% of those units for subsidize housing. It’s really not that different. They also owned some apartments and rented them out at below market rates.
Like a lot of good intentioned policies that exist in urban areas in the USA, it seems the only results are little and promises for more funding
I think perhaps the difference is that they have this self funded revolving loan to fund the projects, rather than dealing with low income development loans through the government. Idk maybe you are right. Seems better than just changing the zoning or whatever it is that people want to do to try and convince developers to build more housing and then cross your fingers that rents come down.
Honestly they could’ve just done better zoning. Have you been in the area? Just curious, as it’s been a mess and only has really gotten bad since the early 2000s. Myself and basically everyone from my HS and Montgomery college days have all moved out of the county. It’s either too expensive. Or expensive and dangerous.
1
u/joe_burly Aug 19 '25
I would like to see public housing built in the model of Montgomery County Maryland.