In this episode, Maryland REALTORS® CEO, Chuck Kasky, and his special guest, Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development Secretary, Jake Day, review what needs to happen in Maryland's housing market and explore Governor Wes Moore's housing bills.
In this episode, Maryland REALTORS® CEO, Chuck Kasky, and his special guest, Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development Secretary, Jake Day, review what needs to happen in Maryland's housing market and explore Governor Wes Moore's housing bills.
The Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development implements housing policy designed to promote and preserve home ownership and create community development initiatives to meet the challenges of a growing Maryland through the Maryland Mortgage Program. For example, the department has empowered thousands of Maryland families to realize the American dream of home ownership. The department's rental housing programs increase and preserve the supply of affordable housing and provide good choices for working families, senior citizens, and individuals with special needs. The department is responsible for community development and revitalization programs like Neighborhood Business Works , community Legacy, and Main Street, Maryland. Today we'll be exploring the role of DHCD in housing policy. Hello, I'm Chuck Caskey , Maryland realtor, CEO, and you are listening to Get Real Estate, the Maryland Realtors Podcast. I'm really excited to interview today's guest , Jake Day, secretary of Maryland's Department of Housing and Community Development. Prior to his nomination to lead Maryland, department of DHCD under Governor Westmore , secretary Day served as the 28th mayor of Salisbury, Maryland, born and raised in Salisbury. He previously served as City Council president. His tenure as mayor was marked by a resurgent downtown, including nearly $650 million in new construction, the establishment of two youth community centers and the creation of a permanent supportive housing program to address chronic homelessness. Secretary Day, also previously worked for the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, most recently as the director of the Center for Towns , utilizing design, planning and implementation assistance to establish vibrant, sustainable, and small cities and towns. He served as National President of the American Institute of Architecture Students and is editor in chief of CRIT, a Journal of Architecture. He was elected as the 79th president of the Maryland Municipal League, representing Maryland's 157 municipalities, and was one of Maryland's representatives to the Chesapeake Bay Program's local Government Advisor Committee. As a major in the US Army Secretary Day is assigned to the Maryland Army National Guard as an information operations and special Technical Operations Officer with a hundred and 10th Information Operations Battalion. That's a mouthful. We're gonna talk a little bit about that too. <laugh> , he's a veteran of the Global War on Terror and was deployed in Somalia, Kenya, and Djibouti . Secretary Dayer , the Master of Science in Nature Society and Environmental Policy from Oxford University earned a Master's of Urban Design from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Maryland Secretary Day. Welcome to the program.
Speaker 2:Chuck, it is a pleasure to be with you today. Thank you so much for having me. And , um, uh, we can talk about the mouthful. We can talk about anything you want,
Speaker 1:<laugh>. Well, it's quite a cv and we are very, very fortunate to have somebody of your accomplishments working in public service to better the state of Maryland. I do wanna check with you on one thing though, at Carnegie Mellon, you studied with someone, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, with whom you are now sharing a spot in in the administration. So tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:I did, I did <laugh> , uh, before I reveal who we're talking about, your listener may already be a step ahead now , <laugh> , but none of us knows what the experience might be like of becoming a member of the governor's cabinet. Right, right . And I didn't know what to expect, but what happened is names get trickled out by the media, by the campaign at that time, or the new administration, I guess, actually it was. And so I knew I was going to be appointed. I had been told this, I'd met with the governor and Fagan the chief of staff, but I didn't know who everyone else was. And so we showed up at a retreat at the, the hotel in College Park. And you , you go up , you take the elevator up and you're walking into a conference room and there's a table with , uh, little ID cards. And standing in front of the table was my former professor of sustainable community development, Rebecca Flora, now secretary of the Maryland Department of Planning, Rebecca Flora, jumping up and down and saying , I, I thought that was you. There was , there's no other Jacob Day. It's gotta be you. Um , and uh, so she was my professor back in 2006 and , uh, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. And I , I , uh, I , I think the world of her, I got to have lunch with her in downtown Salisbury on Friday. And her new chief Sustainable Growth Officer who , uh, Marilyn's new chief sustainable Growth Officer, Sarah Abel , who , uh, worked for me at the Center for Towns and Cool. Was a partner of mine in the American Institute of Architecture Students Leadership as well. So , great . Uh , the world is small, is it not?
Speaker 1:It is. It is. It totally is. And I had a great conversation with , uh, secretary Flora and Wow. She, her, her breadth of knowledge rival's yours. I will say she's done a lot of amazing things, and I just can't thank you all enough for, for choosing public service because you have a lot of options. And the fact that we have such accomplished people in our state government tells us a lot about hopefully our future <laugh> that really brightens our horizons, I think. So again, thank you. Thank you, Chad . Um , so let's start at the beginning. I think it's important because the portfolio of the , of DHCD is pretty enormous. And so let's start us by talking just a little bit about what DHCD does as far as from the real estate practitioner perspective. What is it that we look to you for in terms of creating new housing, preserving existing housing? And we don't give a lot of attention, I don't think as much as we should to rental housing, because we know that for some people it's a lifestyle choice, and that's perfectly legitimate. For others, it's a stepping stone. So we hope that it's affordable enough so that you are still able, if you wanna buy a house eventually, that you can pay rent and still save up some money. And we know that that's been an issue, especially for this younger generation. So give us a little bit of an overview on DHCD and how it affects our members on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker 2:Well, Chuck, I think you just, you just described what is probably, you know, one of my core tasks, which is to, to help people understand how we can help and what we can do. You know, I think it's government's responsibility to be, to be helpful to industry and to be helpful to our citizens. We have a lot of people out there that are toiling every day to make Maryland a state where they can thrive and where other families can thrive because of the work that they do. Whether it's creating jobs or creating housing or, or helping people into housing and, and it's government's job to make all of those jobs easier. So, I like to think of, it's, it would not be surprising, I think, to your membership to think of the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, a cabinet level agency, one of, as they say, the Big five, you know, agencies to be responsible for the governor's housing policy and for advising the governor on housing policy. Not surprising, right? So we do play that role, but few people probably recognize that we are also , um, the governor's tool for, and the state's tool for financing, housing development , uh, particularly affordable housing development. So we finance about a billion and a quarter dollars in housing development every year. And that fluctuates a little bit here and there, but we do a significant amount of financing through our bond tools as well as our tax credit tools and a variety of complimentary tools that we have available to us as well. So that's a , a big part of what we do. Another big part of what we do is helping people into home ownership from a policy perspective, but also from a lending perspective. So think of us as a, as a, obviously I said, you know, development finance, but from a mortgage standpoint too, we're a diverse lending institution. We do about a billion dollars a year in mortgage lending through the Maryland Mortgage Program, which is a program that is focused on first time home buyers and usually compliments a preferential interest rate with down payment and closing cost assistance with cash assistance. And that's pretty traditional, pretty predictable, except for there are some really great targeted programs that I'm so excited about and I don't mind sharing here. One of which is called Smart Buy , which has been modeled by other, and many of your listeners are probably familiar with this. It's been modeled by other states as a result of our, or copied by other states as a result of our model. And Smart Buy actually pays down college debt, educational debt in order to improve the debt to income ratio for, for time home buyers. And so, you know , there are a lot of ways that we try to help people to reach those aspirations that you referenced in the introduction. Another thing that we do is we are essentially, community development is a term, right? It's a term that's used in our name, it's not necessarily a crystal clear term about what that means, but I like to think of it as we're the governors and the states place-based economic development entity. So it's our job to revitalize core communities and whether that means housing, whether that means commercial development, whether that means community and civic institution development. We do all kinds of real estate investing and we often do that through place-based grants. So we have pre-development and development grants, you know, everything from land acquisition to demolition to stabilization of historic properties, or, you know, properties that are not in great condition all the way through architecture and engineering and actual development costs. We do, we do all of that. And we also help occupy those spaces through our business lending tools. And even right now we have available business grants. Uh, so we put dollars into small businesses directly through our grants program today. And for the next six days, we're actually inviting small businesses from around the state to apply for our Business Boost grant program, which can be complimented with our lending tools like Neighborhood Business Works , and , uh, asking municipalities and arts and entertainment districts and Main Street programs to apply for our project Restore 2.0. And, and the idea of both of these grants is to fill vacant spaces to help small businesses grow, expand, and thrive in our core older commercial areas. So we do a lot. And , and before we transition, lemme just share one other
Speaker 1:Thing . Okay . <laugh> ,
Speaker 2:We're responsible for broadband for the state .
Speaker 1:Yeah. Let's go off on that little tangent. Okay . And then we'll come back to the other programs. But it's curious because when, when we started talking about broadband, I was like, where are they gonna put it? Where are they gonna put it? Yeah. So tell us what is happening. I don't think there's another bill. These are all the implementation of the bills from the last couple of sessions. So how's that program going? I think that's a very important and probably under discussed program as far as develop economic development and student, you know, achievement, things like that.
Speaker 2:I think you're right. And I think the way I look at it as a former mayor, I look at it as the utility of economic development for a century and a half has been water. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> water and sewer. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . And so when we think of growth, we think of, well, you gotta plan out access to water and sewer. I think the utility of future economic development, not that water and sewer will lose its importance . Sure . But the utility of future development and, and human development is access to the digital economy, which is broadband. And so it's our responsibility by 2028 under federal law to ensure that 100% of Maryland locations, that means every, every house, every business, every farmhouse, every outhouse has high speed broadband service. And so it's our responsibility not only to provide that infrastructure, and we've got an additional $277 million over the next year and a half , um, that we'll be awarding out to IPS and to counties. It's not our , only, our responsibility to ensure that connection, but then to ensure that we have people who can use it through digital equity tools and digital literacy tools, including educational efforts and provision of things like laptops, devices, to actually connect.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And they're doing some pretty great things with wireless. 'cause it , back then, you know, when we used to think about it, it was all about who's gonna run that cable. And now that doing pretty well with wireless broadband. I just wanted to put in a plug for Maryland mortgage program though, because my, both of my daughters used MMP to buy their first homes and they were fastest growing. Demographic is single women home ownership wise , at least according to the National Association of Realtors. And both of my daughters, when they were single, both bought their first homes. One used the grant program and the younger one used the smart Buy program. And I could vouch for the fact that they are outstanding programs. You , we still, are we struggling still with getting lenders to participate? Have we worked on that? 'cause I, I know for a while that was some, some lenders just were not even telling buyers about the program. Or have we made inroads in those in that area?
Speaker 2:You know, I, I'm not surprised to hear that that was a concern at a point in time. It has not been a concern of staff recently. Um, in fact, we are, we are far oversubscribed right now. It is a program that has a ton of interest and really what we need, and this is , uh, you know, this is, it's my job to make the case for this in the years to come. But we need to grow state appropriations because ultimately Right . We leverage those dollars for significant lending. Um, so we, we need those dollars in order to have the down payment and closing. So closing costs component of the programs in order to, again, leverage all that private interest. So yeah , so you, you'll hear us talking about this a lot in the near future because ultimately it helps support the governor's message about work, wages and wealth. That, that owning something and, and working for yourself. You know, being able to earn an income and participate in the economy and then own a piece of real estate, have something to pass onto your kids other than debt is , uh, precisely where we want to be as a society.
Speaker 1:Well, we, if we can help any way , and, and I always knew that funding was going to be an issue at some point, but if there's anything that we can do, because I think our interests are totally aligned when it comes to , uh, those kinds of programs. So let us know, of course. So your career arc as a way, I mean, how is this, how do you look at this in terms of where it fits in with your other varied interests?
Speaker 2:That's, that's a great question. I feel like my parents asked me that question from time to time . <laugh>.
Speaker 1:Yeah . Maybe . What is he , what is
Speaker 2:He doing with your stuff ? Yeah ,
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:<laugh>, you know, I, I remember the first time I told my dad I was considering running for city council and , um, you know, my dad, who has been one of the most prolific door knockers and canvassers on my campaigns when I was in elected office. But his first reaction was, oh, please don't do that. You , you don't wanna be involved with all that mess. And I think we have a responsibility to turn public service and to turn what government does into something productive and positive. And too often that bad reputation is earned, right? That reputation for myopic views and being self-interested and self-dealing and self-serving, you know, and, and two focus on each other, politicians and elected officials and appointed officials being sniping at one another and not doing the work of the people. I, I wanted to be a part of something different. So I , I view, I view this as , um, another step in the process of me, you know, serving the people of Maryland and being able to do so as a part of a team of, of selfless individuals. Um , and nobody more so than Governor Westmore, I have , I've just been blown away by the type of man he is, the type of person he is. And I feel fortunate every day to get to work for, for him and also his organization.
Speaker 1:You also talked about the , the term community development. And, you know, I think about hud, I mean, think about how long, I don't even know when HUD was created, and I'll bet if you asked 150 people under the age of 40 what HUD stood for, I'm not even sure they could tell us. 'cause we don't even use it . It's just such an acronym anymore. But it , uh, what a throwback housing and Urban developed, I mean, and you see , I guess same thing with affordable housing, right? I mean, so we, we have these terms and we use these terms when we created hud, I don't wanna say dog whistle, but they have connotations, right? And, and we are very much attuned to the meaning that we attach to words and for good or bad, right? They get, they take on certain, certain meanings and, and the history is sort of left , uh, unaddressed in some of these. And so we don't really use the term affordable housing, right? I put it in the same kind of basket as urban development. And to me, it , it just, people think of it and they have a certain preconceived notion of what that means and who that, who that audience is. You know, who are the, on the , who's on the receiving end of these programs. You know what I mean? So what do we do to dispel that notion? Because affordability, there are very few segments of our population that are not affected by the lack and availability and affordability of housing. And so how do we reach a wider audience and , and are we using the right even terminology to address this? And, and first of all, I wanna say thank you as I did in our meeting early on for adopting the word crisis to describe what we are in, in Maryland, but , uh, uh, also in most of the rest of the country, because it really is. And so bringing that sense of urgency to this debate, and that's another example, right? Just what you call it . It's , it , see , we , it , it's a crisis. And once you start calling something that you get people's attention and it raises the discourse to another level. But, you know, you think a lot about this stuff. I know. Are we, we using the right words to get to the right people and our policy makers really understanding what we're trying to accomplish.
Speaker 2:These are,
Speaker 1:That's a lot. I I I do that a lot. Sorry, I ask five questions at once.
Speaker 2:Don't, don't be sorry, <laugh> , don't be sorry. These are, these are such important questions. Lemme start broadly. Messaging is critical. Right? Right. You shared in the introduction that in my other life, in my other career, I'm an information operations officer. You know, I I believe that informing and influencing an audience has profound effects on any meaningful effort, whether it's a military campaign or whether it's a , um, an effort to, to substantially improve the lives of Americans right here at home. I think messaging is critical and how we talk about things is important. The words that we choose are important. And HUD's a great example of that urban development that I think that's, that's a term plucked from a period of time. Yeah . Where clearly there was a searching for a simple phrase to reflect what we wanted to achieve, which was to help our cities be healthy places again. You know , I think we've got so many different phrases and terms that, that are not, you know, themselves careers nor necessarily professions nor themselves. You know, whether it's placemaking or urban design, all of which are trying to take up the mantle of leadership on how to rebuild our cities so that they are the aspirational and inspirational places that we know they can be and that we think they once were. I think the heyday of cities is before us. It's in front of us. I think, you know, American cities have seen great periods of time in the past, all of human history, all of human history. We built places essentially in one way. And then for a 60 year period, a 70 year period, we stopped building them that way in America. And we scratch our heads and wonder why the economics don't work. We scratch our heads and wonder why the , the sociocultural facets of those places don't work. We, we threw away everything we had learned for centuries. And so , uh, I, I think we don't need to build, we don't need to build sort of little Italian villages as a result of that. We can still build in am in an American way. We, we gotta figure out what that balance looks like though. And how to reflect what, what Americans want and need and how to build lovable places. And that's a term that I use often inside the department. You know, both to, and I , I know that can sound a little squishy saying lovable places, but, but I use that term to reflect the need, not only for places that people care about and are willing to be a part of and invest in, but also the acknowledgement that government doesn't get to choose in this country the way people are going to live, where they're gonna hang out, where they're gonna spend their money. So we have to build places that people will respond to, to attract private investment. The greatest multiplier effect we can have is to build something that somebody wants to make, can make some money off of. Mm-Hmm . Like that. That's the way to, that's the way to succeed. Build places where people can, can gain and thrive. So that's, that's my feeling on kind of urban development and, and as a term and, and what, what I think , uh, a future transition might be. I don't know that that's the term forever, but that's why that term was used. So let me, let me now take on it if I can. The mm-Hmm , <affirmative> Yes , please . Question. You indicated correctly, I think that that, you know, when you're short 96,000 housing units in a state with, you know, six and a half million residents, we are in crisis proportions. And it is affecting not just those lowest income families, it's affecting everybody. Supply and demand is on full display in the housing market. And we can see a broken market costing people too much to live in housing that for which they're not provided any additional, they're, they're not getting a premium in services or anything like that for the additional they're paying. They're just paying for the same thing because there's a scarcity issue. And so, I , I think we need affordability up and down the market. I don't have a problem with the term affordable housing, but I think we all have to acknowledge that it is a loaded term. It has, it conjures all sorts of feelings and images. Yeah . And , and one of the things that it does most is it is it draws apprehension from, from those who don't consider themselves as in need of affordability from a traditional, you know, sense of low income . It draws apprehension because they perceive affordability not only as bringing with it and affordable housing is bringing with it an audience that they're not necessarily comfortable with. Well , what does that mean? Right? And also, they conjure up images of places that government built . They conjure up images of public housing. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . Yeah. Not, not privately built affordable housing in the last 30 years or so. Right . They conjure images of public housing, which was the, the affordable housing for, for decades. That is devoid of character, devoid of detail. Placeless, heartless and unlovable. Unlovable,
Speaker 1:Thank <laugh> . You know,
Speaker 2:And , and they , and I think they conjure these images, rightly so, right? Yeah . They , they think of, oh my gosh, that I don't want that in my neighborhood. You know, that that's not a place where I want my kids to, to go play. I , I don't , I don't want somebody else's kids to have to play there, right? Because we built that government built that, and we have to own, we have to take responsibility for those failures, those design failures and those values failures. We earned the reputation that we have. And, and it's gonna take a long time to fix it.
Speaker 1:You alluded to the need to bring back cities as really the center of a lot of good that happens in, in states. And I don't think Maryland is alone in that. I think we, there is emerged and we've, I've talked about it so I'm not gonna belabor the point about local land use and those kinds of decisions and processes that we, I think ha have come to generally agree, are responsible for a lot of what we now face in this crisis. Are we making progress Your ears much more on the ground? And a lot of these are your former colleagues at , you know, in local government. I feel like the message is getting through. You feel like we've made it , albeit incremental, but I feel like we have made progress toward them owning some of this. Uh, but you, you have much more deep , deeper relationships with, with a lot of the local government officials than I do, certainly. But are you getting a sense or am I being over optimistic, or are we actually getting , making progress on that for , on that front?
Speaker 2:I , I don't think you're being overly optimistic. And I think for your listener's sake, I , I would share something that I think I've said for you, and you've probably, you and your members have probably articulated it better. But the way I like to think of it is that we can categorize the barriers to getting ourselves outta this housing crisis as falling into either sort of a , a financial bucket or regulatory bucket. And some of those financial ones are macroeconomic and tough for us to influence at the state level. But the regulatory barriers are almost all at state level or below. And most of them are below the state level. They're at the county and municipal level. And I think there is an awakened audience in local government that they have to play a role and county executives all over the state e even when they're nervous about it, even when they're nervous, you know , uh, presidents of county commissions, even when they're nervous, they, they , they know something needs to be done. Some of them are really willing to shout it from the rooftops. Others are, you know, willing to kinda hammer in the right room. Yeah. Um , and they're all willing to hammer on a policy front now , you know , even if on a rhetorical front, they're , they're a little nervous. They, they're all willing to propose policy solutions. We've seen it in Anne Arundel County and Howard County, Baltimore County, Baltimore City, Montgomery County , uh, we, we've seen it all over the state. We've seen that kind of leadership, you know, even on the eastern shore of some. And so I believe that you are right to be optimistic that we're at a time when local officials, and I can speak as one for, you know , as an elected official for 10 years, you know , in local government, including planning commission and housing commission for 15 years, and president of the Maryland Municipal League. I can tell you that the vast majority of local officials are ready to solve this problem for their constituents because they're listening to their constituents. And, and you've done the polling. Mm-Hmm . <affirmative> <inaudible> has done the polling . You know, Marylanders expect their local government to do something about it, and if not, they expect state government to step in and do the right thing to ease this burden. 'cause every single family in this state is affected one way or another. Every single family in this state is affected. And I do think we have a more receptive audience. Are there exceptions to the rule ? Sure, there are. You know , we, but we, we heard from, we heard from one mayor or the assistant to a , a mayor who testified , uh, in opposition to our housing expansion bill. We, we have heard from a few , uh, city or town council members over the last and one county council member, two , two or three county council members who have been vocal statewide. That's it. You know, the , the Maryland Municipal League and the Maryland Association of Counties, our partners in , in crafting this legislation were loudly with us, you know , and, and had important improvements. Your organization had important improvements to our bills, made them better , uh, have made them better since our engagements. So I am, I, I am of the belief that we're at the right time and we're striking while the iron's hot .
Speaker 1:Yeah . That's a great segue. So of the , uh, let's say three big bills, how are we doing ? I think two have crossed over, if I'm not mistaken. Why don't you give us a little bit of an update by the time this airs? Some of this will be outdated, but it's a good, it's a good snapshot in time as to how you feel like it's going in the old sausage factory, as they
Speaker 2:Say. That's right. That's right. <laugh> . So, so , uh, we've made progress on, on all three bills. So think about our response to the housing crisis as three pronged within legislature. Right? So it's actually, I'd say it's three pronged within the budget legislation and executive action. But within the legislation, there's three prongs. One oriented on reducing regulatory barriers. One oriented on increasing financing capacity, and one oriented on helping renters that are in a difficult situation right now. And so on. Each of those bills, they're advancing. They have all had their hearings, their original hearings, they have all moved through their original committees. And so the Renter's Rights and Stabilization Act has now passed through the house. It is with the Senate. It's been given a hearing date in front of the Senate. And , uh, we expect that bill to move forward soon. The Housing and Community Development Financing Act, the financing bill has also passed the house and moved onto the Senate. It doesn't have a hearing date, or it didn't this morning, but hopefully by the end of the day we'll have an actual date for its Senate committee hearing, or its hearing on the floor. And oh, by the way, it doesn't have to have a committee hearing. Neither of those do, because they already had their committee hearings . But if there are tough questions, they might go back to committee. And then the , uh, housing Expansion Affordability Act, the one that's oriented on regulatory barriers has passed through the Environment and Transportation Committee. So it passed subcommittee passed , uh, committee to tonight this evening. It is scheduled for its second reading on the Okay . Cross floor. Uh , it will likely get laid over by the minority party and be voted on tomorrow instead. And then third reading after that. So we'll expect that to be in the Senate by the end of the week. And to quickly proceed through the Senate, obviously lots of challenges, but we respect the committee process and , um, stand at the ready to answer questions and to help them produce the best legislative product possible.
Speaker 1:We have obviously a lot at stake and, and wanted to thank you for your openness in , in hearing us out. I have said, you know, part of, part of this job, actually, both of our jobs, sort of managing expectations, right? It's a , a little , little piece of our job that we don't talk about a whole lot. Um, but, but just to pull back the curtain a little bit, and we always know going in, you could draft the perfect bill, and it's not especially administration, it's not gonna look anything like it did when it was introduced. But we, we fight for what we can and, and we give up things that we like, but, you know, for the greater good. So part of my own version of, of managing expectations was to say, look, and I said something along the lines of, if all we accomplish is getting the phrase middle housing codified, we will claim victory because that, that the centers around that conversation of what it is that really people can latch onto and, and can really make a difference. 'cause the people at the, the highest ends don't need our help. They're doing great people at the lower end. There are also a lot of programs , uh, that they can take advantage of. But it's that what we call the missing middle. But we defined in the statute, in the bill is defined as middle housing. And I said , again, we don't, I haven't seen the amendments yet, but I will be watching very carefully. And actually our chief lobbyist, Lisa May, is down as we speak. Think I texted her. I think she's in EA as a matter of fact. So she's watching that. And so not to diminish, again, to bring the expectations down so low that, you know, anything's a win. But going back to the conversation, if, if you get to define the term right, you, you set the, the baseline for the conversation. So if middle housing is in Maryland, long codified in Maryland law, that gives us a leg up to discuss how best to provide that, right? I mean, so long-term thinking is if, if you can help define the terms in a way that matches your advocacy, you've accomplished a great deal. And that that's kind of where we are. I think we're on the same page as far as that goes. Yeah .
Speaker 2:Chuck, long-term thinking is what got us to where we're at with the governor's three priority bills. Yeah . You know, we've built an incredible team in our division of policy strategy and research that I'm really proud of under the leadership of Assistant Secretary Scott Re And what Scott's team will tell you is they, you know, they did an analysis of every state in the union and how they had approached the housing crisis, if they had approached the housing crisis. Yeah . <laugh>, there are kind of clearly three approaches, maybe four. I I think we could describe it as four. But one is ignore it, right? And at do so at your own peril. The second is to maybe touch on a housing issue. You know , maybe a home ownership program, maybe a homelessness program, something here or there. Nothing comprehensive, right? The third category, and I'm skipping one, right? Uh , there's this <laugh> continuum here. Okay . I'm skipping one . The , the third category is to go for broke. Do everything right now, just, you know, the most comprehensive, trying to be the cool guy in the room on housing policy. You've done it all. You've proposed it all. And what we saw was on that continuum, those states who had proposed sort of the most comprehensive housing strategies in one legislative year failed. And it cost their governors immense political capital. It cost the conversation around housing immense political capital. It basically made everybody gunshot. Yeah . And it, it set up a moment to reset. There , there is a fourth, and that fourth is, is where we've tried to land, which is, Hey, let's make the debate about this issue. Let's say we have to address this issue. Let's force people to talk about it. Let's say we, we cannot ignore it any longer, but let's not do all of the things that maybe need to be done or touch on all subsets of the issue today. But let's open the door, try to move the needle, and next year we're gonna be back, and the next year we're gonna be back, and the next year we're gonna be back. And, and there are lots of things that we need to touch on. If you'll notice, we have not proposed major funding increases or changes on our home ownership programs or on our, our critical loans, our whole home repair programs. We have, we have areas that we, frankly, homelessness too, too. Yeah . We have areas legislatively where we have work to do in future years on, on housing and, and housing policy. But on supply, we, we took a big swing. Yeah . We took a big swing, regulatory and finance on protection of renters subject to a turbulent rental market. And, and the creation of additional homeless persons that, that causes, we took a big swing. And I have to give a ton of credit to the Maryland Association of Realtors on your help on, on that bill, particularly the , uh, right of first offer and right of first refusal. What we proposed, you improved and you guided us, and you've guided the general assembly through improving that. And I just wanna say thank you.
Speaker 1:It is our pleasure. And for our listeners, some of whom might not be happy that we helped <laugh> , you know, and , but we made that commitment to you. And I wanna make this very, very clear to our members that, you know, we, we made the commitment to you personally, to the governor, that we were gonna help. And, and we took the long view and the big view. And you were very, very generous in your observation. And that these were gonna be hard for us because in isolation, some of these things we might be pretty much opposed to at a pretty high level. But we made the commitment to you to take the bigger view and the longer view and that to, to make things as palatable as possible. Things that we're frankly not in love with, but we knew were important to you, so that we could tackle these really bigger issues on a longer term. So that's, that's the nature of the political process. And so we're been very happy to help. 'cause we see this again, as you mentioned, as a long-term, very wide ranging partnership. So,
Speaker 2:Well, and, and Chuck as a result of that, I believe, you know, two , two things. One, I think improving policy, you see as bad policy when you're, when you're fairly confident there's going to be something that's
Speaker 1:Happen . Exactly .
Speaker 2:<laugh> is , is not a, not a bad strategy. No, it's not . Uh , but secondly, like through that process, I think the Maryland Association realtors continues to reinforce its reputation as an advocacy organization and a membership organization that can be trusted to have the best interest of Maryland citizens, whether they be homeowners or future homeowners. And I think that's, that's what the way we wanna look at many renters, if not most renters, is that these are folks that yes, maybe some of them have made a lifestyle choice. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . But , but where they can gain a real estate asset that becomes valuable to their family. We wanna help them. And, and in the meantime, we don't want them to be subject to anything punitive or unfair so that they can be in a position to become a , a healthy homeowner. And, and the right of first offer , right of first refusal process that you all improved upon greatly what we had proposed. That, that is the transition from renter to homeowner, which is again, a , a really powerful part of the overall bill. And one that I am keenly interested in protecting. And lemme just go back to one other topic that you brought . The middle housing thing, that achievement, you're right, should not be minimized. I think it needs our continued advocacy in the final days, particularly in the Senate. And so I encourage the Maryland Association Realtors to do all you can to respectfully engage with our, our senators, to encourage them to , uh, ensure that there is a product , um, in the, in the legislation that supports middle housing development within, you know , traditionally single family only zone neighborhoods.
Speaker 1:That will always be a topic of conversation. And if we need to mobilize, we'll see where the lies. But we will certainly have that conversation in-house about a mobilization effort, if that's what it takes. So real , real quick, let's finish up, I guess we, we talked about incrementalism and, and although it it is, it's somewhat frustrating. Um, where do you see the next kind of focus? I mean, I could tell you from, and , and you know this of course, but I go assume most of our members do as well, but every time you talk about housing supply, people bring up adequate public facilities. So, so as roads and the schools and the water sewer and the police and fire and all these other things, and I've read, and I know you have too , studied some of these adequate public facilities ordinances. I, I personally see that as the next sort of thing we need to focus on. I feel like some of them are based on models that haven't been updated necessarily. You know, the , the school seat yield, the water yields, all those things. Are they, even the road capacity study, are they, are they based on assumptions that still hold water today? Do they need to be revised? Is are local governments paying attention to that? Because I've gotta be honest, I'm kind of tired of hearing every time you talk about new housing, people throw up roads and schools and water and sewer in your face. Like, we can't afford it. And I said , well, we, we could choose to not afford it, but don't ever say one of the wealthiest states in the wealthiest country on the earth can't afford it, quote unquote . But if we choose not to, that's a policy call. That's okay. Uh, but is that, is that the next kind of focus you think? Or am I missing the mark there?
Speaker 2:I don't think you're missing the mark at all. I think, you know, one of the other focuses of the future is, is certainly on middle housing and expanding our efforts there. But, but yeah, as far as adequate public facilities ordinances go, this is an area where I, I don't know whether or not that will remain in the bill. The Environment Transportation Committee in the house stripped that stripped our language out of the bill. That was, that was a , a hard hit to take. Yeah . But you know, I think we, we've got to continue to push on this fight , uh, particularly when you think about two things. One, the adequate public facilities ordinance enabling legislation created in state law articulates affordable housing as one of the public facilities that we should be building adequately.
Speaker 1:Yeah , right. <laugh>
Speaker 2:And , and paying for with the development of other housing, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . So, you know, enshrined in state law is a consideration for producing affordable housing that is today used to stop affordable housing. Yeah. Yeah . <inaudible> , it's a political move. Uh, so that's number one. Number two is that, let's remember that the way we pay for our, our water and sewer pipes and our roads and our sidewalks and our, our streets and our schools is our property taxes. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> . We , we build things and that's how we pay for things. And so development should pay for what it can, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> , I don't believe that. I don't believe that, you know, all development needs subsidy to work. Uh , and I think everybody should pay their fair share. So I do think that, you know, as we, as we build, we can, you know, ensure that we do have adequate public facilities . I don't think as a standard matter of practice , we should not build things until there is a certain, you know, acceptable level of service on a certain public facility. I just think it is an unacceptable approach to public policy. Yeah . It is an illogical and unfair approach to housing development, and it just doesn't make economic sense just in terms of the cycle of dollars. So , uh, I'm, I'm really troubled with the way that a PFOS have been misused. Yeah. Um , and I do think that, well , you know, I think we can all agree on the fundamental desire to have adequate facilities of all kind. That if we recognize where we're at today, we are in a crisis of adequate private facilities. We're in a crisis of housing supply. And we , and people deserve that. They deserve a roof over their heads just as much as they deserve that lane of traffic or that extra inch or two in capacity, in diameter of their water pipe. All of those things matter. But let's not treat housing as if it is unacceptable to build . You know, we know that families are shortchanged families who live in our communities today by the inadequate housing that we have , and it's time to fix it. You're here,
Speaker 1:<laugh>. That's a great note on which to end. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. Appreciate your time. And to our listeners, thank you for the privilege of your time. This is Get Real Estate, the Marylanders Podcast. I'm Chuck Caskey , Marilyn Realtors, CEO. Thanks as always. To our esteemed producer, Joshua Woodson, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Like us, share us, give us five stars if we've earned them, and give us feedback, including guests you'd like us to invite or topics to explore. So, be kind, stay safe and in honor of Spring, which has sprung is a little cold this weekend, but I'll leave you with a quote from Jane Air Charlotte. Bronte said, spring Drew on. And the greenness grew over those brown beds, which freshening daily suggested the thought that hope traversed them at night and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.