By GRIFFIN LIMERICK
The West Hyattsville-Queens Chapel Sector Plan — originally formulated in January 2022 with the stated intent of providing greater housing variety, density and walkability near the Hyattsville Metro stations — was sent back to staff for a rewrite a second time by the Prince George’s County Planning Board on Jan. 9. The planning board asked staff to address concerns that the plan would displace residents from affordable housing rather than increase the number of affordable units, to update the plan in accordance with new state and county legislation, and to reconsider new construction in the flood plain.
Making or displacing affordable housing?
At the Jan. 21 Hyattsville City Council meeting, Lakisha Hull, director of the Prince George’s County Planning Department, repeatedly stressed the need for more “missing middle housing” — a concept championed by the city council in an Aug. 6, 2024, letter to the county planning board that emphasized “the need for a comprehensive Missing Middle Housing study.”
In her presentation, Hull defined missing middle housing as duplexes, triplexes and other structures that allow for greater population density on a single plot of land, including townhouses and live–work structures — essentially hybrid spaces where residents’ offices are located in the same building in which they live, and sometimes even in the unit itself.
The construction of more missing middle housing, according to Hull, would yield greater housing variety “at all income point levels,” particularly affordable units for lower-income residents.
“We’re trying to address housing typology from blue collar workers to the professional workers to the empty nesters,” Hull said.
Recently developed detached homes or townhouses in Hyattsville include The Riverfront at West Hyattsville (built in 2021), Suffrage Point (built in 2022) and Gateway West (built in 2023). The cheapest of these new Hyattsville homes sold for around $500,000, and the most expensive for more than $1,000,000.
By comparison, the median home value in the Queens Chapel area, according to the second draft of the sector plan, is $276,751, and the countywide median home value is $311,017. What’s more, a graph credited to the National Housing Conference’s 2023 Paycheck-to-Paycheck database and used by Hull in her presentation shows that annual income needed to afford median home ownership in Prince George’s County is around $140,000. The median household income in the Queens Chapel area is $58,553.
New state policy on affordable housing near metros
At the Jan. 21 council meeting, Thomas Lester, who works for the county planning department’s Community Planning Division, said that, in addition to the second draft of the plan unintentionally displacing residents from subsidized or naturally occurring affordable housing, one of the reasons for the remand is House Bill 538, also known as the Housing Expansion and Affordability Act. Signed by Gov. Wes Moore on April 25, 2024, and codified into law on Jan. 1 of this year, HB 538 allows developers to build more housing per acre if a certain percentage of affordable housing units is incorporated into their plan.
Lester also said that HB 538 addresses housing shortages and affordability by targeting new construction within 0.75 miles of a rail station, “offering these projects certain benefits.”
County policy on housing near Hyattsville metros
The drive for greater density near transit-oriented development derives from Plan 2035, a sweeping, 300-page document approved in 2014 that “includes comprehensive recommendations for guiding future development within Prince George’s County.”
A quote in Hull’s presentation excerpted from this 20-year plan claims that the county is not prepared to meet the housing preferences of its seniors — “a growing segment of its population” — and its young professionals — “a critical component of its workforce and economic competitiveness.”
“Simply put, we are facing a looming deficit in multifamily housing,” the plan says. Hull emphasized that this statement still applies today, “eleven years later.”
The plan’s stated solution for this problem is transit-oriented development: “Plan 2035 designates eight centers with extensive transit and transportation infrastructure and the long-term capacity to become mixed-use, economic generators for the County as Regional Transit Districts,” according to p. 19 of the document. The plan goes on to recommend “directing the majority of future employment and residential growth in the County to the Regional Transit Districts.”
Hyattsville Crossing Metro station, referred to as Prince George’s Plaza Metro in the document, is one of these regional transit districts. Plan 2035 also targets lower density development near the West Hyattsville Metro station, which is listed as one of 26 local centers.
At June 2024 listening sessions for the sector plan, residents questioned why Queens Chapel Manor was being targeted for redevelopment when neighborhoods such as Queensbury and University Park are also low density and close to the Hyattsville Crossing Metro station.
In July 2024, the county council passed County Bill-15-2024 — zoning legislation that went into effect on Sept. 3, 2024. The bill doubles, and occasionally triples, maximum residential densities in transit-oriented areas. Lester said the sector plan applies this rezoning to Queens Chapel Manor “to accommodate more missing middle houses near the two metro stations.”
“However, this plan overlooks other neighborhoods with similar proximity to metro stations that could also benefit from the zoning,” Lester acknowledged. “It also places the responsibility of adding missing middle housing solely on Queens Chapel Manor.”
The remand will allow planning staff to evaluate this discrepancy.
What about the river?
Other concerns about the sector plan include the environmental impact of new construction around Queens Chapel Manor. The 1,085-acre sector plan area is bisected by the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia River and its 100-year flood plain. Despite the plan’s tendency to market the area as an attractive place to live because of its proximity to the river and the abutting bicycle trails, new construction can be undermined by this very layout.
The plan’s second draft lists environmental challenges, including flood control and groundwater contamination from gas stations and vehicle repair shops. It also calls the cost of mitigating these issues when building new construction “prohibitively expensive.”
According to a Jan. 9 planning department memo, the initial sector plan was sent back partly because the county’s Department of the Environment said floodplain development in the first draft conflicted with the county’s climate action plan.
Although “sustainable development and mitigation strategies for floodplain development” is named in the memo as another reason for the recent remand, this time around, the delay is for consideration of how to make building in the flood plain possible, whereas the second draft strongly discouraged development in the flood plain altogether. At the Jan. 21 city council meeting, Lester said the previous plan “doesn’t fully account for emerging technologies and materials that could enable environmentally sensitive and safer development in flood plains.” He went on to add that further research is needed rather than a blanket prohibition.
After prompting from City Council President Joseph Solomon (Ward 5), Hull — who was hired as the county’s planning director Dec. 7, 2023 — shared that she previously worked as planning director for the City of Miami.
“The entire city is pretty much under sea level, so we had to figure out how to mitigate and have some forethinking sustainable development,” she said.
She added that the flood plain conversation is part of a larger conversation staff is having across the county. Hull was hired as Miami’s planning director in July 2022.
The largest portion of Hull’s presentation to the council on Jan. 21 was devoted to accessory dwelling units (ADUs).
“Some people know them as carriage houses; some people know them as granny flats,” Hull said. “Those are those great, quick wins that we can be very surgical in being able to insert self-contained housing units adjacent, or within close proximity, to a primary residence.”
Although the implication was that allowing ADUs to be built on the property of single-family residences in Queens Chapel Manor would help with the affordable housing problem, Hull said ADUs are not currently part of the sector plan. Her presentation on them was merely a response to the missing middle housing study that the city council requested in its Aug. 6, 2024, letter.
Lester said that staff have already begun revising the plan, and that a third draft will be released this summer. If approved, it could be implemented as early as summer 2026, according to Hull.
Solomon stressed that he’d like the plan to be passed as quickly as possible.
“While I understand the need for the remand or the desire to have the remand,” he said, “I also understand that the community has worked long and hard on this and are looking forward to seeing it come to fruition.”