2026 Candidate Questionnaire
County Council At-Large
Marc Elrich (D)
Website: marcelrich.org
Find all candidate questionnaires here.
Housing Leadership
In your view, why are many Montgomery County residents struggling to afford housing?
When we build without strong affordability requirements, we get luxury units that do nothing for the working families, teachers, nurses, and service workers who make this county function. We’ve zoned our downtowns in Bethesda, Wheaton and Silver Spring and they produce very few affordable rentals or condos. That zoning doesn’t meet the income of the vast majority of renters, and it produces very few family sized units, so it’s not suitable for housing a broader range of our population. Too much height and density does not produce affordability.
As County Executive, I built and preserved 9,000 to 10,000 affordable units — more than any prior executive. I put over $100 million a year into affordable housing and signed countywide rent stabilization into law. However, the need is enormous because for decades before that, the county wasn't doing nearly enough.
Here's the other piece people don't talk about enough: our county master plans project that three-quarters of future residents will have incomes below $80,000, with two-thirds below $50,000. Those are the people we need to be building for. Instead, the Council has been pushing zoning changes that open up neighborhoods to displacement without requiring adequate affordability, or requirements to house people being displaced. I voted against Thrive 2050 and More Housing NOW because the county's own racial equity analysis showed they would harm minority and lower-income communities, which are the very people we're supposed to be helping. It is alarming that we put in place a policy of evaluating developments for racial equity impacts and then ignore the results of the evaluation. Not a single plan has policies in place to deal with displacement, or prevent a net loss of affordable units.
We need to increase the MPDU requirement from 12.5 to 30 percent, require no net loss of affordable housing in any new development, require family-sized units, and use county-owned land to build affordable housing directly rather than handing it to developers who will build mostly market-rate. And we need to fix the tax structure so we have the revenue to actually do it at scale. We have been using county owned land to provide much greater affordability and when we’ve had leverage with a development; we’ve gotten higher levels of affordability, but it comes at a high cost.
What is one housing initiative you would plan to spearhead, if elected?
If I had to name one, it's reforming the Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit (MPDU) program, which is the county's primary tool for requiring affordable units in new developments. Right now, the requirement sits at 12.5 to 15 percent. That means a developer can build a hundred units and only 12 or 15 of them need to be affordable. The rest get built at market rate, and we call that an affordable housing policy. It isn't.
I want to raise that requirement to 30 percent and broaden the income range it serves, from families well below 50 percent of area median income all the way up to those above 90 percent. Affordability is a crisis across the income spectrum, not just at the very bottom. I'd pair that with a no-net-loss requirement, so that any new development that displaces existing affordable units has to replace every single one of them. And I'd require family-sized units (three and four bedrooms) because right now we're building a lot of 1-2 bedroom apartments that don't work for the families who need housing most.
Developers will push back hard on this. They pushed back when I vetoed tax breaks as County Executive, and the Council overrode me. That's exactly one of the reasons I'm running for Council, because these decisions get made there, and residents need someone in that room who is going to fight for them and not for the developers.
Zoning, Supply, and Housing Prices
In your view, how does current zoning policy in Montgomery County affect the supply and price of housing?
The Council has been operating on the theory that if you loosen zoning and allow more market-rate development, housing will become more affordable. That theory has not worked, and the evidence is right in front of us. We have been up-zoning and we have not solved affordability. What we have done is made it easier to displace the lower-income and minority residents who are already here.
I voted against Thrive 2050 and More Housing NOW because the county's own racial equity analysis showed these policies would harm the very communities we are supposed to be helping. When you open up neighborhoods to denser development without requiring meaningful affordability, you do not get more affordable housing. You get more expensive housing built on top of what used to be affordable housing.
The core problem is that current zoning policy puts almost no real obligation on developers. Like I said earlier, our MPDU requirement needs to be increased because 15 affordable units on 100 total units is not a serious policy, particularly since the council’s own guidance says that more than 75% of future residents will earn below $80K and 2/3 of those residents will earn less than 50K. Another thing we ignore, studies of housing and mixed U.S. development show that if you’re trying to create mixed use, you actually need an even higher percent of affordable housing because wages in the retail and service sectors exacerbate the housing shortage. If you’re creating more low-wage jobs then you need more housing for that population.
Zoning should be a tool we use to extract public benefit from private development. Right now, we are giving away density bonuses and tax breaks and getting very little in return. If we raised the MPDU requirement to 30 percent, required no net loss of affordable units, and required family-sized units in new projects, we would actually move the needle. Until we do that, loosening zoning just accelerates displacement and drives up prices for the people who can least afford it.
What changes would you support to Montgomery County’s zoning policies to support greater housing affordability?
As said earlier, changing the MPDU requirement to 30 percent. That is the single most powerful lever we have to make new development actually serve the people who need it.
I support a no-net-loss policy, meaning any development that removes existing affordable housing must replace every unit it takes. We cannot keep allowing affordable housing to disappear and then patting ourselves on the back for the luxury units that replace it.
I also support using county-owned land for affordable development rather than selling it to private developers. I want to expand our right-of-first-refusal so the county can acquire any property zoned for housing before it goes to the private market, not just apartment buildings.
On transit-oriented development, I support denser development near transit nodes, but only when it comes with genuine affordability requirements. I can’t stress enough that density without affordability is not a housing policy for the people who actually need help.
I would fix the very broken zoning process. I would allow by right conversions to housing and not use the normal re-zoning process.
There are over 100,000 units that are in Master Plans but not yet built. Most of those plans would re-envision commercial areas and not really targeted for single families. These would be good places to incorporate low-rise apartments into the housing mix (we actually used to do that) that’s why you see so many low-rise apartments around the core of Silver Spring, Wheaton and Bethesda. We moved away from that and probably ought to include that in the mix of newly developing areas.
Affordable & Market-Rate Housing
Please explain what you see as the role that each of these types of housing play in the housing landscape in Montgomery County, and the needs they fill for Montgomery County residents:
a. Affordable (subsidized) housing
Montgomery County needs both subsidized affordable housing and market-rate housing, but we have to be honest about what each one can and cannot do. They serve different populations, they are built under different conditions, and they require different policy tools. Conflating them leads to bad policy and broken promises.
Subsidized affordable housing is the only tool we have to serve residents the market will never reach. For families below 50, 60, or 80 percent of area median income, market-rate development is simply not an option. These are the working families, the seniors on fixed incomes, the service workers who make this county function, and without subsidized housing they get priced out entirely. Our county master plans project that two-thirds of future residents will have incomes below $50,000. If we are serious about keeping Montgomery County a place where everyone can afford to live, we have to invest heavily in subsidized housing. As I said earlier, I invested over $100 million a year in affordable housing and built or preserved 9,000 to 10,000 units. That is the scale of investment we need to sustain and grow.
b. Market-rate (unsubsidized) housing
Market-rate housing serves residents who can afford it, and it does play a role in the overall housing landscape. It would be economically counter-productive to not meet demand for market-rate housing. But market rate should not be built to displace affordable housing, unless your goal really is to remake the demographic of the county. The market builds for people who can pay market prices, and in Montgomery County that means upper middle and upper-income households. The theory that if you build enough market-rate units prices will eventually fall for everyone has not materialized at the scale or speed our residents need. The market is a lot more nuanced than simple supply and demand. It requires direct investment, strong MPDU requirements, and policies that compel developers to contribute to affordability rather than simply profiting from the county's growing demand.
What is one policy change in each area that you would pursue, if elected?
a. Affordable (subsidized) housing
Raise the MPDU requirement to 30 percent and broaden the income range it serves, from well below 50 percent of area median income up to above 80 percent. I would pair that with a requirement that affordable units be distributed throughout the development rather than clustered in less desirable locations, and that they include family-sized units.
b. Market-rate (unsubsidized) housing
I would not offer tax breaks or density bonuses to market-rate developers without a genuine community benefit agreement that includes affordable housing, local hiring, and labor standards. The county has been too generous in what it gives developers and too timid in what it asks in return.
Transportation & Smart Growth
What would you do to prioritize transit frequency and access if elected?
Transportation is the biggest barrier to economic development and affordable living in this county. We have had a Bus Rapid Transit plan for over a decade and have not built an inch of it. As Councilmember, I will push to fund and build BRT on Georgia Avenue, Colesville Road, and University Boulevard. The council has been totally unwilling to address the county’s capital needs and the BRT is the poster child for it. When I first introduced it, I had hoped that we would get ahead of NOVA - it was really clear back then that transportation or the lack thereof would drive development. We failed because Virginia developers supported being taxed and the same people on this side of the river didn’t support it, nor did the elected officials. So we’ve successfully become the jurisdiction with the lowest commercial taxes that loses the development game to NOVA where commercial taxes are far higher.
I'd like to reintroduce a special taxing district on commercial property, modeled on what Northern Virginia has done for decades, to generate dedicated revenue for transit construction. Northern Virginia, as a whole, uses these districts to generate over $500 million a year for transportation, Fairfax has a 12.5 cent tax on ALL commercial property for transportation and Special taxing districts where they want development that add another 20 cents or more. We generate nothing comparable, and that has to change.
I also support making Ride-On fare-free permanently and integrating it into the BRT network so that people can get where they need to go without a car. Free transit is an affordability policy, a climate policy, and an economic development policy all at once.
What would you do to ensure safe walking and biking access to transit, stores, schools and services for residents of existing and new housing?
Safe streets are not a luxury. They are a basic requirement for a functional community. I support the Purple Line BiPPA sidewalk recommendations and will push to fund them as the budget allows. I also support improved pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure near transit stations, schools, and community services, particularly in communities that have historically been underserved by county investment. When I first got elected we were doing pretty much nothing with flex posts, I saw what the district was doing and told my staff I wanted that here. I’m a big believer in squared off corners, narrowing and other practices that lower speeds, as well as reducing speeds.
The county has to make these investments through a racial equity lens. Safe walking and biking infrastructure is great wherever it is built, but the communities that most need it are the ones that have gone without the longest. I will prioritize those communities.
Community Input & Stakeholder Engagement
What organizations, stakeholders, datasets, or other sources of information would you turn to to understand the nuts and bolts of housing policy implementation, and how to craft effective policies that meet Montgomery County’s housing needs?
I have spent decades working directly with the organizations and institutions doing this work. I convene nonprofit housing providers monthly and have built relationships across the sector. For housing policy I would draw on the Housing Opportunities Commission, CASA, Montgomery Housing Partnership, Housing Unlimited, and the broader network of affordable housing nonprofits that work in the county every day.
For data and analysis I would rely on the county's Office of Racial Equity and Social Justice, which I created, to evaluate the equity impacts of any proposed policy. I would also look to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development.
I would engage tenant organizations, homeowner associations in affected areas, and the immigrant community organizations that know firsthand who is being priced out and who is being displaced. And I would continue meeting with union partners, because workers are residents too, and their wages directly determine whether they can afford to live in the county where they work.