The Silver Spring Penguin

There’s a squeeze on cheap homes in Silver Spring, but the county should aim to keep the affordable housing units it has before building more, a task force reports.

“That existing unit is already served by schools and roads,” Scott Reilly, a task-force member and chief operating officer of the county’s department of housing, explained to the citizens advisory board Monday night. “You don’t need to build additional infrastructure.”

The county’s affordable-housing program requires developers to make 12.5 to 15 percent of a project’s units cheap enough for the average working stiff. And by “working stiff”, the county means an individual renter pulling no more than $43,000 a year ($46,500 if you’re looking to buy), or a household of five making $66,500 tops ($71,500 for home buyers).

According to census data, the average Silver Spring household hauls in $82,000 a year and keeps 2.45 people under its roof.

The affordable-housing program has 95 units — 10 of them rentals — circulating in below-the-Beltway Silver Spring, with another 100 units in the pipeline, Reilly said. But downtown’s recent building boom has dropped 1,200 units on the area, with 1,300 more in the works, according to the Celebrate Silver Spring Foundation.

Do a little math, and that means 8 percent of downtown’s existing homes fall under affordable housing (ditto for homes in the pipeline).

Reilly chalked it up to the relative lack of residential construction in Silver Spring since the program’s inception in 1974. Most of the new-home construction — and the affordable units that go with it — has gone down in the county’s outer reaches, like Clarksburg and along the I-270 corridor, he said.

People shopping for high-rise condos have a tougher time finding affordable units. Reilly pegged that on the high cost of constructing condos, particularly in urban areas, and monthly fees that owners pay on top of their mortgages.

Still, the task force emphasized preservation of the existing stock and decreasing renter displacement when apartments go condo. In its report, issued in January and distributed at Monday’s citizens advisory board meeting, the task force called on the county’s housing initiative fund to cover the costs.

But what about rent control? Fuhgetboudit. Reilly said the task force was “cool, at best” to the idea.

According to Reilly, keeping rents on track with inflation was a big flop in neighboring Takoma Park. Landlords there found it difficult to turn a buck and let building maintenance go to crap, causing “a degradation in existing housing,” he said.

Rent control would also run up a big administrative tab for the county, where 70 percent of landlords already follow annual rent-increase guidelines, Reilly said.

“It’s not something this task force chose to recommend,” he said.

Photos: (top) The Silverton condos along East-West Highway. Credit: J. Deseo/SSP. (Left) South Silver Spring was a hard-hat zone last summer (still is), with rentals and condos going up across the street from The Blairs and The Bennington apartment complexes and the Silverton condos. Credit: R. Pace/SSP.