02-04-2025
Moore's remodeled housing bill approved by House; still needs Senate consideration
Del. Robbyn Lewis (D-Baltimore City) discusses amendments for House Bill 503. (Photo by Danielle J. Brown/Maryland Matters)
The House voted 104-15 Tuesday for what started as Gov. Wes Moore's (D) priority housing legislation but which was so heavily amended that the not even the original name remains.
What began as the governor's 'Housing for Jobs Act' will now head to the Senate as the 'Housing Development Act' – with nearly every component of the bill that tied housing development to job growth stricken.
The heavily amended House Bill 503 now prompts the Department of Housing and Community Development to set 10-year housing targets for the state, its counties and every municipality, and report on their progress annually.
'It allows our entire state to work together to make sure that each jurisdiction has a role … in showing how to produce the housing that our people need,' said Del. Robbyn Lewis (D-Baltimore City) during debate on the House floor. 'Our state is 96,000 housing units short. We're not serving the needs of our constituents. This bill allows us to do that.'
Most of the changes adopted by the House were first introduced in the House Environment and Transport Committee last week.
When introduced in January, the governor's bill was framed as an expansion on his housing package from last year. The original version aimed to expedite housing development by requiring counties to automatically approve most qualifying project requests in areas where the state determined there was an imbalance between housing and jobs.
House members overhaul Moore housing bill with 'simpler' amendments
The bill did not get its first hearing until March, but representatives from the counties and others quickly expressed 'significant' concerns, particularly over the bill's language that would have forced counties to approve housing in some situations.
Under the amended bill approved Tuesday, each jurisdiction would have a hand in creating those targets and would consider estimates for future employment and housing demand along with population growth and other considerations.
The bill also creates so-called 'vesting rights' so that a housing developer with an approved project proposal would retain the right to develop the property for at least five years, or a period granted by the local jurisdiction or the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, whichever is longer.
The legislation creates a new Housing Opportunities Made Equitable Commission — the HOME Commission — a group of various stakeholders that would study the housing crisis in the state and make recommendations to lawmakers to address the issue.
During a floor session Tuesday morning, Del. Christopher T. Adams (R-Lower Shore) secured one amendment to add a residential real estate owner to the commission, which was seen as a friendly amendment and accepted into the bill.
Other Republican amendments were not as lucky.
Del. Kathy Szeliga (R-Baltimore County), noting that 'quite a bit of the bill was stricken in the reprint,' offered an amendment to opt Baltimore County out of the provisions of the legislation. She said the county is more proactive in setting future housing plans than what the bill would require.
'We are, in Baltimore County, setting these targets and these goals on a local level through our county council that does a great job of doing this every four years,' Szeliga said. 'I don't think that the state setting housing goals should be preemptive over the local county. My county councilman does an amazing job, as do all seven of them. I prefer to leave this in the hands of our local government and not have the state override that.'
With clock ticking, lawmakers still hope to iron out issues on Moore's housing bill
Lewis argued that the bill does not attempt to override any local planning efforts but calls on the counties to work with state housing officials to set local targets that would help boost housing supply in their unique areas.
'These targets are non-binding, and the process for having each jurisdiction work with the department actually sets up a really strong and regulatory consistency standard,' Lewis said. 'So that, across our state, we're all working together to make sure that each jurisdiction builds and produces the amount of housing it uniquely needs on a timeline, supported and encouraged by the Department and the HOME commission.
'This is not a preemption bill,' she said. 'We, the committee, understood very well the concerns about that.'
Szeliga's amendment failed on party lines, as did another proposed by Del. Matthew Morgan (R-St. Mary's) that would have restricted local jurisdictions from approving new housing projects in areas where schools are overcrowded.
Despite the hefty changes, the Moore administration has previously expressed support for the new direction of the legislation, saying it still 'moves the needle' toward the governor's goal of boosting housing supply in the state.
Senators will need to take a look at what is essentially a brand new bill than the Senate version they last considered in early March. With just days left in session, senators will need to work quickly to pass the legislation out of committee and before the full chamber before Sine Die on Monday.
