County Executive Marc Elrich (D) signed amendments into law Friday that aim to keep renters in their homes by removing impediments to preserving affordable properties.
The county has had a Right of First Refusal law for 40 years. Under the law, the county, the Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County or any certified tenant organization (in that order) must be offered the opportunity to buy a rental property before the owner can sell to a private party.
Under the new amendment, the county can now assign the right of first refusal to qualified affordable housing partners who are interested in purchasing a multifamily rental building, in order to preserve the affordability of the apartments and prevent displacement of existing tenants.
“The most important part of all this is it helps renters stay in their homes,” Elrich said.
Council Vice President Kate Stewart (D-Dist. 4) said the amendment is vital to keeping families in the community.
“These are families who live in these apartments, and if they’re faced with having to move, that means children being taken out of our schools and having to go somewhere else,” Stewart said during a Friday press conference at the county executive office building in Rockvillr. “That usually means increased commute times for families. It means people leaving our community, like our soccer coaches and heads of our neighborhood associations.”
The county’s Right of First Refusal laws enabled the county to buy the Westchester West apartment complex in Aspen Hill last year and sell it to a community partner, preventing residents in more than 385 affordable apartments units from being displaced.
“If today’s changes to the Right of First Refusal program had been placed last summer, Westchester West would have benefited even more,” said Melissa Bondi, policy director with Enterprise Community Partners, the organization that purchased the property from the county. “The necessary steps could have proceeded more efficiently, more quickly with less upfront capital from the county. And that’s critically important when such scarce financial resources and tenant wellbeing are on the line.”
Under the new amendments, the process will be simplified. Instead of the county having to own a property in the interim as it did with Westchester West, the county would have the right to transfer it immediately to another party.
“It was a hard flip because it took a lot of money to make those deals work. And this will make [the process] a lot easier,” Elrich said.
Another amendment would cap the “good faith” deposit required of those purchasing the property at 5%.
Matt Losak, executive director of the Montgomery County Renters Alliance, told MoCo360 that the amendments are “an important fix.”
“It is extremely important for this process to empower renters to have a say in the outcome of a purchase,” Losak said.
Losak said the next challenge will be outreach to landlords and tenants to ensure they understand the process and their rights.
“While tenants have an increased say in the outcome, it’s still limited … unless they have $100 million” to buy a property, Losak said.