Maryland must build its way out of affordable housing crisis | GUEST COMMENTARY (original) (raw)

Maryland’s affordable housing challenge has reached a crisis level. A recent report from Maryland Matters delivered staggering numbers: The state is facing a shortage of roughly 100,000 housing units. At the current pace, it will only meet half of the demand projected for 2030. This isn’t just a matter of real estate; it is a threat to Maryland’s competitiveness and the financial stability of lower, working and middle-class families.

The path forward in housing affordability requires political courage to address the root cause of high costs: a fundamental lack of available living spaces. However, as public leaders look for easy “wins,” there is a temptation to follow a misguided cohort of lawmakers falsely villainizing third parties rather than solving the problem.

Montgomery County, for example, enacted a rent control ordinance in 2024 that limits annual increases in rent to 3% plus inflation, with an absolute maximum of 6%. Since then, multifamily building permits issued per quarter fell to just 23, compared with an average of 582 per quarter in the seven quarters before rent control was adopted, according to a recent report from the county. What’s more, some Maryland leaders are attempting to frame pricing software used by property managers as the primary driver of rising rents — an ill-informed approach that misdiagnoses the disease.

The core of Maryland’s problem is the “housing math” that simply doesn’t add up. The Moore-Miller administration correctly identified “regulatory drag” — the delays and shifting fees that can derail construction projects — and restrictive zoning as bottlenecks leading to a level of supply that doesn’t meet demand. Legislation such as the Starter and Silver Homes Act aims to lower the cost to build by 30% by allowing for smaller homes on smaller lots. This is the kind of supply-side intervention that would actually move the needle.

In Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C., reports indicated year-over-year declines in rent costs in 2025 for the first time in five years. In fact, in many metro areas nationwide, an influx of new units is tipping the scale in renters’ favor through an increase in competing housing options.

In contrast, Maryland policymakers’ intervention in pricing ignores the basic laws of supply and demand. Rent control artificially sets the price of rent below market value, disincentivizing additional investment in housing that’s desperately needed. Regarding software pricing tools, they are essentially mirrors of the market, not the cause of its volatility. This technology analyzes data to help property managers understand occupancy and fair market rates, and it helps to eliminate human bias by suggesting rents based on objective market data, ensuring more equitable pricing across the market. Blaming data analysis for high rent in a market with a 100,000-unit deficit is like blaming the speedometer for a speeding car.

This nonsensical “plan” to making housing more affordable (1) wastes valuable legislative resources that could be spent on issues like zoning reform, (2) discourages additional investment in new housing at all price points (which has negative downstream effects for those who need help the most) and (3) fails to put a single new roof over the heads of Marylanders. Why are some policymakers pursuing this path? It is far easier than telling a room of angry NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) protesters that their neighborhood needs more townhomes and duplexes.

Last year, cities including Philadelphia and Minneapolis enacted bans on rental pricing software. Now, Baltimore is considering whether to blindly follow suit. San Francisco was the first city to restrict the use of this type of property management software, and rents have continued their steep climb in the area. In contrast, rents have fallen by double-digit percentages in Austin, where the technology is still used, due to added housing supply. If Maryland truly wants to lower housing costs, it must lean into the “Housing Growth and Affordability Agenda.” We need to unlock state-owned land near transit hubs and eliminate barriers that prevent diverse housing types from being built.

We cannot pull ourselves out of the affordable housing crisis by masking the shortage and banning tools used to measure it. In fact, doing so discourages the construction needed to increase affordability. Maryland’s housing problems have grown over time through decades of under-construction and exclusionary zoning. The only way out is to build more homes.

Lawmakers should avoid overcomplicating a problem simply explained by supply and demand. Marylanders need their leaders to do the hard work of making Maryland a place where there’s enough room for everyone to live.

A lbert R. Wynn (wynna@gtlaw.com) is a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives who represented Maryland’s 4th Congressional District.