Bill tackles affordable housing on a state level

But it’s up to local governments to solve their own problems, experts say

To pay for the state fund, the bill includes an added state property tax — about 2 cents per each $100 of assessed property value; public utilities would pay 5 cents more for each $100 of assessed property value.

‘‘Affordable housing is always a good target because it affects so many people,” said Del. Tom Hucker (D-Dist. 20) of Silver Spring, who serves on the House Environmental Matters Committee with McIntosh (D-Dist. 43) of Baltimore and supports the bill. ‘‘In my own Silver Spring apartment, our rents just jumped 10 percent. All our rents are going through the roof, and something needs to be done about it.”

McIntosh’s bill would greatly benefit areas, such as Montgomery County, where land scarcity and booming populations have led to skyrocketing rents and home prices, Hucker said. Unfortunately, the tax portion of the bill could make it difficult to get through the legislature, he said.

‘‘If you’re going to impose a tax at the state level, you have to determine whether you are only involved as a nanny forcing counties to collect the tax to fund their own housing, or if you are imposing a tax on everyone to help areas like Montgomery County ease their stress and strain,” said David A. Smith, founder of the Affordable Housing Institute and Recapitalization Advisors in Boston. ‘‘Whom you choose to tax tells you who is paying for this thing that everybody wants and nobody wants to pay for.”

For 17 years, Smith has helped jurisdictions across the nation revitalize and recapture affordable housing units, including work this year on a preservation deal in Annapolis.

‘‘Elected officials at all levels are all for more housing affordability, but when you tell them it costs more money, they say no,” Smith said. ‘‘Now the goal is helping localities use the tools they have to get the results they want.”

In Montgomery County, that means the County Council approving a dedicated funding source for its Housing Initiative Fund, which is used to buy, renovate and maintain affordable housing.

If approved, the council’s annual contribution, at least $16.1 million, would be taken from the county’s general fund. Any other contributions — including those collected from housing taxes — would be extra.

‘‘The [HIF] is unique in that it provides us with a pot of investment money, which really helps,” said D. Scott Minton, executive director of Montgomery’s Housing Opportunities Commission, which handles affordable housing for the county. ‘‘The county is doing what it can, but there are always the obstacles of supply and demand, and it takes a lot of money to meet the demand.”

The state’s housing pains are reflective of trends nationwide, said Jacqueline Byers, research director with the National Association of Counties.

‘‘We’re seeing two big problems in counties: County employees can’t afford to live and purchase housing in the counties they serve ... and counties which traditionally were involved maybe in only providing public housing, are now also trying to provide affordable housing,” she said.

Byers attributes the second trend to the high and steadily rising cost of living in urbanized areas. The transition is especially noteworthy in some Maryland counties, such as Montgomery and Prince George’s, because of their beginnings as ‘‘Inner-Ring” suburbs, two of the 240 first suburbs in the country.

‘‘These are the [suburbs] that are starting to mirror the inner cities with diversity of population and problems like decaying infrastructure,” Byers said. ‘‘They are having to learn how to come up with incentive programs to house their populations in ways that have not always been popular with developers.”

Examples, she said, are the price-controlled units in the Founder’s Ridge development in Fairfax County, Va., and Montgomery County’s Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit program, which requires developers to dedicate 12.5 percent of their units to affordable housing.

Since the program’s inception in 1974, about 11,000 MPDU units have been built, Minton said. ‘‘In the 1970s and ’80s when the county was growing in leaps and bounds, the program generated large amounts of units. Unfortunately, we’re getting to the end of that in the county.”

With many areas quickly reaching development capacity, the answer lies in mixed-use developments, said Royce Hanson, Montgomery County’s Planning Board chairman.

‘‘We’re looking to increase density but also decrease congestion through high-quality design,” he said.

To do that, Hanson suggests requiring builders to provide or pay for additional affordable units or developments, or approving an increase to housing taxes, such as recordation taxes, to fund affordable housing.

‘‘It used to be that policy in affordable housing came from the top down: Washington, D.C. All the programs were federal programs and trickled down,” Smith said. ‘‘But within the last 10 to 15 years, all the initiatives have occurred at the local level.”