Laurel’s mayor and City Council are working to amend an affordable-housing law to require more housing developers to sell homes at below-market rates and to change who is eligible to buy those cheaper homes.
A family of four with household income between $84,650 and $118,510 would qualify for the cheaper homes under changes proposed mid-December.
Two currently proposed developments could be among the first affected by any ordinance changes. One is the 293-home Corridor Center at Contee Road and Cherry Lane, which will mostly be townhouses and condominiums, and the 82-townhouse Oaks at Laurel, off Van Dusen Road. Of the total 375 homes, 30 would be affordable units if the new law applies to them.
Mayor Keith Sydnor proposed amendments to the two-year-old affordable housing law in November. The council has been debating changes to the draft in several meetings since. Those deliberations will continue at a council work session Jan. 7 and at meetings with public hearings on Jan. 12 and 26.
What does the current law say?
Currently the law requires developers of 50 or more detached homes, townhouses or condominiums to designate at least 8% of those homes as affordable units. To qualify to buy them, buyers must have an income that is no more than 60% of the federally calculated Area Median Income (AMI), which varies by family size. Right now the AMI is $169,300 in Prince George’s County for a family of four, which means that currently, any family of four with an income of $101,580 or lower would qualify.
Developers must sell the affordable homes at a price that is at least 70% below a market-rate price. This is a wording mistake in the current law, because the previous mayor and City Council intended to set the price at 30% below market rate.
What might the new law say?
The new law will clarify the reduction in price of affordable homes to be 30%, not 70%. That would mean, for instance, that if homes in a new development sold for $500,000, the affordable housing units would be priced at no more than $350,000.
As of mid-December, the mayor and council were looking at lowering the size of developments subject to the law, so that developers building 20 homes or more, rather than 50 or more, would have to designate 8% affordable units. They were also looking at raising the income cutoff to 70% of AMI, rather than 60%. At the same time, they were considering excluding people making lower than 50% of AMI – who therefore might not have enough income to pay for necessary upkeep.
The proposed ordinance would keep the current 8% as the number of units in a development that must be designated as affordable housing.
The proposed ordinance also would add rules to keep affordable units from being too different from market-price units: they would have to have similar architecture, design and color; be built with the same materials; have at least 80% of the interior space of market units; and have no fewer bedrooms or bathrooms. Also, the affordable units would have to be dispersed throughout the development, rather than be clumped together.
The ordinance would prohibit owners of affordable units from renting them out and, for 30 years, would cap the price at which the owners could sell the units. The council is working on how to calculate that cap, taking into consideration inflation and any money the owner spends to maintain or improve the home.