On January 30, 2024, Associate Policy Director Dominic Butchko submitted written testimony to the House Environment and Transportation Committee in support of HB 13- Residential Property- Affordable Housing Land Trusts- Authority to Establish Condominium Regimes. This bill authorizes Affordable Housing Land Trusts to establish condominium regimes.
For the 2024 Maryland General Assembly Session, MACo has made it a priority – one of the Association’s four legislative initiatives – to Advance Comprehensive Housing Solutions. Much like climate change and sea level rise, the challenges surrounding affordable housing are vast and call for a large, multipronged effort. While in other policy areas, it may be easy to deduce a simple cause-and-effect relationship, housing is a complex web of multifaceted factors. Addressing challenges like workforce, financing, interest rates, broad economic trends, supply chain, and large out-of-state corporate interests – among many other obstacles – requires an all-hands-on-deck effort from policymakers at all levels.
MACo is working with sponsors to cross-file legislation to target several components of this crisis: abandonment/blight disincentives, corporate owner transparency, and short-term rental oversight. Additionally, under this initiative, counties will be supporting other pro-housing legislation which helps to advance the conversation, balances local flexibility, and ensures more Marylanders can afford a place to call home.
Counties support HB 13 as it provides an additional tool in the toolbox for local actors, with the best interests of the community in mind, to address the affordable housing crisis. If passed, this legislation would save significant time and resources for projects meant to bring more Marylanders into homeownership and increase the broader affordable housing supply.
HB 13’s cross-file, SB 199, was heard on January 30, 2024 in the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. Dominic Butchko submitted written testimony in support of this bill.
SB 199 was heard in the opposite chamber, the House Environment and Transportation Committee, on March 26. HB 13 was also heard in the opposite chamber, the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, on March 26. MACo submitted testimony in support.
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