Why Affordable Housing?

Affordable housing is the most frequent issue we have heard in our listening sessions with community members. We want Montgomery County to be a place where people who work in the county can afford to live in quality housing, and where families can afford to live and settle across generations. 

Affordable Housing Policy

We focus on 3 areas of affordable housing policy, based on Shane Phillips' book The Affordable City:

1. Supply: Build new, high-density transit-oriented housing and affordable housing.
   Supply is imperative to stabilize housing prices in our region, and make sure that housing subsidy goes to those with the most need.

2. Stability: Provide stability for families to continue living in Montgomery County across generations. It strengthens our community when residents are able to live in the same neighborhood over years. This impacts many facets of life, including quality of education, community safety, and more. An example of this includes preserving the quality of older, affordable housing stock.

3. Subsidy: Subsidy is necessary to supplement the housing costs for our lowest income residents and to build affordable housing for the future. A main reason why families were able to keep housing during Covid was the subsidies the federal, state and local governments provided towards rent.

Victories

1. Statewide Housing Victories
   In the 2024 Maryland legislative session, we supported two bills related to affordable housing and stability for renters, which both passed.

2. FAITH ZTA
   Thanks to our organizing, in April 2024, the Montgomery County Council passed the FAITH ZTA (Zoning Text Amendment) measure which will make it easier for religious congregations and private educational institutions to build affordable housing on their land.

3. Housing Initiative Fund
   In 2002, AIM won the first dedicated funding for Montgomery County’s Housing Initiative Fund to create and preserve affordable housing. Every year since then, AIM has successfully pushed for increased funding, resulting in over $1.1 billion in total. 

How to Get Involved

To get involved in our housing campaign, contact the AIM delegate for your congregation or community, or contact Tanushree Isaacman (tanushree@actioninmontgomery.org).