B4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, MAY 2 , 2022
The housing project was seen
as a strong effort to ensure that
local residents would not be
priced out. The planned two-
building complex, on the corner
of West Glebe Road and Mount
Vernon Avenue, would offer aner, said those disappointed in
Elrich’s first term are “misguid-
ed.”
“Has he made enough progress
or as much as we’d like? Well, we
need him to make more,” Schnei-
der said. “That’s why he’s running
for a second term.”Fixing a reputation
Arguably the deepest dividing
line between Elrich and his chal-
lengers is what to do about Mont-
gomery’s affordable-housing cri-
sis, which is set to worsen unless
officials take significant actions
to intervene.
Both Riemer and Blair, along
with a majority of the current
council, think there needs to be
more housing across all income
scales, including market-rate
housing.
Elrich, however, thinks hous-
ing should be built only if it serves
the poor and if it comes with the
appropriate infrastructure,
meaning roads and schools. It’s
more important, he says, to pre-
serve the affordable housing that
already exists.sions, but it took them a year to
approve it.
On affordable housing: “I don’t
control the housing,” he said; the
county’s planning board and
County Council decide zoning
laws.
In 2019, Elrich added, he inher-
ited a budget deficit that left little
room for new investment. Then
in 2020, the coronavirus pandem-
ic hit. He argues that he kept
Montgomery safer than many
other jurisdictions through
covid-19, though several County
Council members say he doesn’t
deserve primary credit.
Maryland Sen. Cheryl C. Kagan
(D-Montgomery), who has
known Elrich since the 1990 s,
said his “pattern” of blaming oth-
ers for the shortcomings of his
first term isn’t an inspiring — or
savvy — political strategy.
“When he was one of nine, he
could be an extremist... and let
others do the follow-through,”
said Kagan, who is backing Blair.
“Those skills do not translate to
an executive position.”
Schneider, the Elrich support-campaign promises, from shut-
ting down a polluting trash incin-
erator to building out bus rapid
transit in eastern Montgomery.
His efforts to cut greenhouse gas
emissions and “reimagine” public
safety have been mired in studies
and task forces with little to show
in tangible change, critics say.
In 2018, Elrich said Montgom-
ery had the “the worst business
climate in... possibly the uni-
verse” and that he hoped to fix it
by the end of his first year. There
have been some improvements,
business leaders say, but regula-
tions remain onerous. “We ha-
ven’t moved the needle forward
by much,” said Lori Graf, chief
executive of the Maryland Build-
ers Association.
None of this is really his fault,
Elrich said.
On the Dickerson incinerator:
Leggett extended a contract with
the operator until 2026 and there
aren’t great alternatives on where
the waste should go, Elrich said.
On climate action: He sent the
council legislation to require ex-
isting buildings to cut their emis-the Democratic Socialists of
America, they said that he was a
socialist who would spend with-
out reserve and “imperil the
county’s economic and fiscal
prospects.” The Washington Post
editorial board endorsed Blair, a
political newcomer, in the pri-
mary, and Nancy Floreen, a Dem-
ocratic council member who ran
as an independent, in the general
election.
Buoyed by his faithful, Elrich
beat them both.
The worst fears about Elrich
have not materialized in his first
term: Montgomery still has its
Triple-A bond rating and an-
nounced in March that it’ll be
setting aside the equivalent of
10 percent of its budget in re-
serves for the first time since that
goal was set in 2012. Taxes haven’t
been raised even as county spend-
ing has increased — a function of
Elrich’s budgetary skills or the
federal government’s generous
relief packages, depending on
who is asked.
At the same time, however,
Elrich hasn’t fulfilled many of hisunusually deep level of afford-
ability. A quarter of units would
be saved for renters making
40 percent or less of the area
median income, while half would
be for those making 60 percent
or less.
About 95 percent of local resi-
dents earn less than 40 percent of
the area median income, accord-
ing to a 2019 survey conducted by
Tenants and Workers United, a
community activist group. The
rising rents and redevelopment
projects have slashed options for
those residents. Between 2000
and 2017, Alexandria lost about
90 percent of its affordable hous-
ing stock.
Before the project came to a
vote by the City Council, some
residents affiliated with Saint
Rita spoke in opposition to it.
Many expressed worries that it
might increase traffic, or that the
two towers of the housing com-
plex might cast a shadow on the
Saint Rita school playground.
Land-use concerns regarding the
alley were largely avoided in the
debate, and council members
voted unanimously to approve
the project.
Alongside the lawsuit, though,
Atwell said the church “has also
taken steps to ensure that the
parties involved now have ad-
equate time to discuss and re-
solve outstanding issues, so it can
continue serving its parishioners
and the local community.”
Ingris Moran, the lead orga-
nizer for Tenants and Workers
United, said she was “shocked” to
hear about the lawsuit. While
Moran has typically stayed home
on Sundays with a newborn baby,
her husband attends Mass al-
most every weekend at Saint
Rita.
The project “really does have
the intention of meeting the need
of the current residents who are
in this neighborhood,” she said.
“Anything that is going to stop or
delay this project is concerning.”strong economic pressures driv-
ing prices up,” said Alexandria
Mayor Justin Wilson (D). “This is
a site that was always going to
redevelop.” (Amazon founder Jeff
Bezos owns The Washington
Post.)modate the coming influx of new
technology workers in the area
officials have dubbed “National
Landing.”
“Even before Amazon’s an-
nouncement, this is an area that
has been in the crosshairs ofa way for churches with rapidly
shrinking congregations to keep
their doors open.
About four miles away in the
Beauregard area of the city, an
Episcopal congregation voted to
build a 113-unit apartment build-
ing for low-income renters on its
land. Just over the border in
Baileys Crossroads, there is a
push to build senior housing on
the excess land adjacent to a
mainline Protestant church. Fur-
ther west, a Presbyterian congre-
gation in Fairfax City is working
with Habitat for Humanity to
turn part of its parcel into a set of
affordable townhouses.
In Arlandria, however, the
church that seems to be standing
in the way of affordable housing,
even though Saint Rita is a major
community institution for work-
ing-class Latino immigrants in
Arlandria, many of whom attend
its twice-weekly Spanish Mass.
The area is sometimes called
Chirilagua, after the Salvadoran
town to which many community
members can trace their roots.
Atwell said that both the dio-
cese and Saint Rita Catholic
Church, which counts nearly
1,000 families among its parish-
ioners, support adding afford-
able housing options to the area,
including through mixed-use de-
velopment next door.
He noted that many Catholics
in Alexandria support programs
that provide housing to at-risk
individuals and direct financial
assistance to underserved com-
munities to pay for rent, utilities
and other basic needs. That is
why others in the Northern Vir-
ginia city are upset, or at the very
least surprised, that the church is
now asking courts to review the
project.
With the new Amazon head-
quarters just a few miles away,
change is already coming to Ar-
landria, which is about a mile
from the new Potomac Yard Met-
ro station being built to accom-lawmakers effectively took that
right away, he claims, and passed
it on to the nonprofit Alexandria
Housing Development Corpora-
tion, which is building the com-
plex.
“The current plans negatively
impact the ability of the parish
and the school to serve its mem-
bers and the local community
and diminishes its legal rights
and property interests,” Billy
Atwell, a spokesman for the Ar-
lington Diocese, said in a state-
ment. “The Diocese had to take
certain steps under the law, be-
cause of timing constraints, to
protect its property rights now
and into the future.”
Andrea Blackford, a spokes-
woman for the city of Alexandria,
said in a statement that the city
does not comment on pending
litigation. “We have reviewed the
complaint and if the lawsuit is
served we will respond appropri-
ately,” she said.
Jonathan Frederick, president
of the Alexandria Housing Devel-
opment Corporation, said in a
statement that the nonprofit
“looks forward to continuing our
work to deliver much needed
affordable housing to this neigh-
borhood.”
Because the lawsuit has been
filed but not yet served, some
worry that it is a last-ditch effort
to further delay a much-needed
affordable housing project, one
that has already been years in the
making and that would be
among largest sources of com-
mitted affordable units in Alex-
andria.
The lawsuit also seems to
mark a stark departure from a
regional trend. Across Northern
Virginia and nationwide, church-
es have increasingly been giving
up some or even all of their land
as a way to combat a shortage of
affordable housing. In some cas-
es, these deals have also served as
DEVELOPMENT FROM B1
Diocese files lawsuit against Alexandria over a≠ordable housing development
MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ/THE WASHINGTON POSTALEXANDRIA HOUSING DEVELOPMENT CORPORATIONABOVE: A mural depicts the
Latino immigrant experience in
the Arlandria neighborhood of
Alexandria, where an
affordable housing complex is
slated to be built. LEFT: The
Catholic Diocese of Arlington
has filed a lawsuit against
Alexandria, alleging that
lawmakers effectively took the
right of a Catholic church here
to use an alley that separates
the church and private school
from the housing development
and passed it to the nonprofit
building the complex.In 2020, he vetoed a bill giving
tax breaks to developers willing
to build high-rise buildings on
top of Metro stations. The council
overrode his veto, but Elrich
maintains that the legislation,
supported by the Sierra Club and
the Montgomery County Cham-
ber of Commerce, was a mistake.
“There’s no other way to say it,”
he said over breakfast one morn-
ing in March. “We got rolled by
the developers.”
Seated at the Busboys and Po-
ets restaurant in Takoma Park,
Elrich said he’s not anti-develop-
ment or anti-business. He’s invit-
ing developers to build affordable
housing on county land, and he
has plans to spur Montgomery’s
economy, including investing in
artificial intelligence research
with the University of Maryland
and removing impact taxes to
attract businesses — an idea that
experts think is viable but com-
plicated.
“I really think we’re about to
turn the corner,” Elrich said.
He recognizes that Montgom-
ery has a reputation for not being
business-friendly, but it’s a rap
he’s trying to fix.
As for his own political image,
the path forward isn’t as clear, he
said as he finished a breakfast
omelet that he requested without
a side of potatoes. Since the pan-
demic started, Elrich has been
practicing intermittent fasting
and observing a no-carb diet. He’s
lost 45 pounds.
“You know,” he added, just be-
fore leaving to testify in Annapo-
lis, “I’m more complicated than
people think.”
Several weeks later, at the end
of a candidate forum focused on
social justice issues, Elrich was
asked what he would prioritize if
reelected.
Climate and income inequality,
he responded. Then he paused.
“I feel very much like I want to
leave the world a better place
than I came into,” he said. “How
does life become so different
when we are all people occupying
— literally — the same space?”
Sitting near the front, Kather-
ine McKenna of Colesville lis-
tened, unimpressed. She didn’t
vote for Elrich in the 2018 pri-
mary and had come to see what
he had to say after his first term.
“I wanted him to talk policy,
but nothing came across,” said
McKenna, who is in her 70s.
“Oh,” she added as she left the
forum, “And he mumbles.”Some of the liberals who
backed Elrich in 2018 say they’re
disappointed in his slow progress
on climate action and criminal
justice reform. His critics have
launched a campaign calling for
voters to choose anyone but him
in the election. His two main
opponents — County Council
member Hans Riemer (D-At
Large) and businessman David
Blair — have outpaced him in
fundraising. And this week, Blair
picked up the endorsement of the
Montgomery County Sierra Club
Group, an influential environ-
mental group.
Elrich in turn has said he’s
being publicly maligned. At can-
didate forums, he’s pushed for
more time to rebut his opponents
and sometimes confronted them
after the event for statements
they made.
“They just don’t know the job,”
he said in a recent interview
about his opponents. “So much of
what they say is a pack of lies.”
Much of Montgomery’s politi-
cal landscape will shift in 2023,
with three term-limited council
members, two new council seats
and a new governor. To take on
the county’s post-pandemic chal-
lenges, from the worsening men-
tal health of students to the busi-
ness closures caused by lock-
downs, the next county executive
needs to be someone “who can
build bridges and bring every-
body to the table,” said outgoing
council member Nancy Navarro
(D-District 4).
“I don’t know if [Elrich] would
be that proactive leader in a
second term,” she said.
Others, however, say it’s pre-
cisely because there’s so much
change looming in Montgomery
that voters should stick with El-
rich.
“Absent a scandal,” said Gino
Renne, leader of the county’s em-
ployee union. “Montgomery
County voters don’t have a tradi-
tion of turning out incumbents.”
Blame and credit
A former elementary school
teacher, Elrich made his political
debut on the Takoma Park City
Council before being elected to
the County Council. In 2018,
when Elrich said he would run to
succeed outgoing county execu-
tive Ike Leggett (D), his critics
were aghast.
Pointing to his affiliation with
ELRICH FROM B1
Elrich defends his record in tough Montgomery County executive reelection bid
ROBB HILL
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich, seen at Tuesday’s candidate forum i n Rockville, has taken criticism from
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