2026 Candidate Questionnaire
County Executive
Peter James (D)
Website: peter4moco.com
Find all candidate questionnaires here.
Housing Leadership
In your view, why are many Montgomery County residents struggling to afford housing?
On a national and global scale, we face a K economy, with the wealthy class, via the banks, extracting more and more from the debtor class. Please take some time to watch “Money as Debt II” to understand how money is created and extinguished. Few people understand the true nature of circulating money. Fixing this problem would make virtually everything affordable in the US because there would be prosperity.
Locally, I believe there is is simply a supply and demand problem. As mark Twain said, “Buy land. They’re not making any more of it.”.
Material costs have also gone up primarily due to the effect of inflation caused by the money as debt system.
Most recently, well meaning MoCo’s rent stabilization law has completely wiped out funding for multi family dwelling in MoCo. Multi-family permits went from a high of 1200 per quarter before to a low of 7 after rent stabilization. The last quarter was 23 permits.
Our current County Council does not understand how stressed the commercial real estate debt market is currently. Banks and private equity have limited funds and they will only fund the best deals with the least risk. The same project in Northern Va, without rent stabilization, will get funded vs one in MoCo.
The County and HOC are subsidizing the wealthy class of landlords and developers to produce rental units. Guaranteeing the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
A modest 1 br apartment cost $270K over 30 years to rent. The same unit costs $70K over 30 years.
What is one housing initiative you would plan to spearhead, if elected?
I would focus on turning renters into owners by redirecting county subsides and bonds funding to back owner fixed rate mortgages. I would issue housing bonds denominated in square foot notes. These would circulate as a local currency and would be inflation proof.
The best path to generational wealth is home ownership. Rents increase every year while a fixed rate mortgage payment stays the same.
Zoning, Supply, and Housing Prices
In your view, how does current zoning policy in Montgomery County affect the supply and price of housing?
Clearly, zoning effects supply and price. Density and housing types correlate to land costs and number of occupants per land area.
What changes would you support to Montgomery County’s zoning policies to support greater housing affordability?
MNCPP was formed in 1927 by racist developer and Democratic party boss, Edward Brooke Lee in order to subvert the democratic process and keep blacks out of white neighborhoods.
To this day MNCPP provide rich white folks ie. developes a dispropotionate say over zoning laws.
I believe MNCPP is unconstitutional as it is not a “republican form of government” as guaranteed in Article 4 Section 4 of the US constitution.
As County Executive I would obey my oath and not fund in it current form. Either I would move its functions into the County government or require its board be elected just like the school board.
I believe transit oriented development is a veiled attempt by rich developers to lower there costs (ie. remove parking requirements) and increase their profits. I doubt any of these developers will pass through a equal share of their saving to purchasers and renters.
Instead of packing low income households like rats in a smaller cage, I support lower densities and more housing types in all zones.
Given MoCo current 200 year old transit system and 100 year old road system, this is not a workable solution.
This is why, as County Executive, I would implement a 21st century hybrid transportation system, described in the transportation answer below. This would completely alter the County’s current housing/transportation paradigm.
Similar to the Sim City urban planning video game, I will implement a 3D online version so that every citizen can provide input on how their community will look.
Nuero-evolutionary algorithms, would stat with community consensus design and eve love an optimal design based on the variety of infrastructure carrying capacities.
All that said zoning changes arer the privy of the council. I would use my veto power very sparingly in this regard.
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
This segment is the most needed and is where I will focus most of my attention.
My youngest daughter is a teacher and is engaged to a teacher. They are just now looking to buy a home. These public benefit professions, service and manual labor workforce often are forced to live outside the county to find affordable housing.
They, like most young adults, are required to provide a larger portion of their income then we experienced.
A single parent is even more challenged.
The fastest growing age range in the county is the elderly. Most elderly, on limited fixed income may be even more challenged financially the others in finding affordable housing.
b. Market-rate (unsubsidized) housing
This segment requires attention to assure the is adequate infrastructure capacity like schools, water & spec-tic, transportation and related funding sources that are adequate.
My online 3D digital twin citizen controlled urban planing platform while allow citizens to be assured all the required infrastructure capacities and visual aspects meet the community’s consensus standards, before any approvals.
What is one policy change in each area that you would pursue, if elected?
a. Affordable (subsidized) housing
I would redirect bind funding and subsides from developers and landlord to funding and subsidizing hoe ownership. This would be directly and through entities like HOC and Habitat for Humanity.
b. Market-rate (unsubsidized) housing
I would provide home building robots to owner acting as general contractors, construction workers and builders. This will also be used to build affordable housing as well.
The most promising home building robots will be for rammed earth homes. Rammed earth homes will last 500 years and be literally dirt cheap.
Currently, rammed earth homes are much more expensive than stick built hmes because of the higher labor costs. Remove the labor cost and that’s where the savings comes from.
This technology will be used for affordable housing as well.
Transportation & Smart Growth
What would you do to prioritize transit frequency and access if elected?
I will implement autonomous guideways. The headways(frequency of vehicles on the guideways is 3 seconds. Buses have 15 to 30 minute headways. Trains some what shorter.
The eTrikes that carry passengers will come to your door. This will provide on-demand access for everyone.
Along major congested corridors like 270, 495, 355, Veirs Mill, 29, University, etc. the guideways are elevated. On 270 and 495 the guideways are at grade.
Elevated guideways cost ¼ the cost of dedicated lane bus rapid transit(BT) and ½ the cost of hybrid BRT. Elevated guideways are 1/2th the cost of light rail.
At grade guideways lanes cost $500K per mile and carry as much capacity as 5 lanes of highway that cost $100M.
This will eliminate 80% of fossil fuel vehicles, because there transit times arer twice that of cars. This is because they are none stop and don’t stop for lights or traffic jams.
Transit times are 4 times or more faster than existing transit.
They will eliminate the need for parking and most of the roads. In down county areas and Wheton up to 30% of land area is use for parking and roads for cars. Most of the area will nw be available for other uses like walkable street with more green space, affordable housing, etc.
What would you do to ensure safe walking and biking access to transit, stores, schools and services for residents of existing and new housing?
No response
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?
What I will be implementing will totally be changing the housing policy paradigm. So, virtually all the conventional sources of data will be obsolete. With the elimination of traffic congestion, the prospects for housing policy is greatly expanded.
Acceptable distance between home and workplace will be doubled or more if transit, meaning the acceptable area for homes is tripled or morre.
I would use mental health research to better understand the impact of home size on people mental health.
I world turn to organizations like MIT Senseable City Lab that arer applying bleeding edge technologies.
I have been talking with Risto Miikkulainen, the professor implementing nueroevolution in the link above for over a decade and have a plan to implement his technology like Evolutionary Surrogate assisted Prescription (ESP) to optimize urban planning, transportation and all government operations and capital projects.
I will use a mobile app called Amble to uncover “latent” travel demand of marginalized population like the elderly and disabled.
Rather than transit oriented development, I will provide people oriented transit.