A starter home on a smaller footprint, a cottage next to a townhouse, a building where every unit is affordable to a family making 60% of the area’s median income: Charles County’s mixed-housing bill would make room for all of them. Residents get their say at a public hearing Tuesday, Oct. 27.
The Charles County Commissioners will take testimony on Bill 2026-10, Zoning Text Amendment 26-191, at 6 p.m. at the Charles County Government Building, 200 Baltimore St., La Plata. The hearing is hybrid, so people can testify in person or online. Written comments are already being accepted.
The board voted 3-1 on Sept. 15 to introduce the bill, with Commissioner Gilbert “BJ” Bowling III opposed and Commissioner Ralph Patterson absent. Because the next board takes office Dec. 1, the final decision could fall to commissioners who have not yet been elected.
What the bill would allow
The amendment creates a new “mixed residential community” use in two zones, Medium-Density Residential (RM) and High-Density Residential (RH), inside the county’s development district and priority funding areas. It would not apply countywide.
Within those zones, a builder could combine single-family homes, cottages, duplexes, townhouses and multiplexes in one planned development. The bill creates a new “cottage dwelling” category and lowers the minimum footprint for single-family and cottage homes. Senior planner Kirby Blass told commissioners in September that staff sees those changes as a way to add “starter homes and missing middle housing” at price points the county’s market does not offer now.
Each project would need the Planning Commission to approve an “alternative design and development code” covering site layout, building placement, architecture, landscaping, circulation and open space before any site plan moves forward.
The proposal came from a private applicant, filed March 24. The Planning Commission held its own hearing July 20 and unanimously recommended approval.
A bigger bonus for all-affordable projects
The second half of the bill came from the public. Before the Planning Commission hearing, a former Planning Commission member suggested allowing 12.1 homes per acre for any project in the RH zone that is 100% affordable. Staff did not adopt that blanket number, planning supervisor Joel Binkley told commissioners. Instead, the bill lets 100% affordable projects in the RH zone get the same density bonus now available to developers who buy transferable development rights, the credits the county uses to steer growth away from farmland.
The county’s existing affordable-housing bonus, tied to its voluntary moderately priced dwelling unit program, is so small that no one has used it, Binkley said. “Over the last number of years that the MPDU program has existed in Charles County, no one has taken advantage of this program to our knowledge,” he said. The hearing notice says the bigger incentive applies when a substantial share of units is reserved for households earning no more than 60% of area median income.
Binkley described the change as a short-term step. Planners would like to expand similar bonuses to other zones in the county’s upcoming zoning code rewrite and, over the long term, move toward a mandatory set-aside program, which the county’s 2016 comprehensive plan and 2025 affordable housing strategy both recommend. He said tiny-home communities are another medium-term goal.
The cost question
Bowling’s objection was money. Smaller, cheaper homes need the same county services as larger ones, he said, but pay less in property tax. “Whatever the difference is, is going to be made up by the taxpayers of the rest of the county,” he said in September, and he asked for a fiscal note on the bill. Staff said no fiscal analysis had been done because the proposal came from an applicant.
Another commissioner called the approach “a win-win” that gives young buyers and seniors more options while still letting developers make money.
The bill documents are posted on the county’s hearing notice. Residents who want to know whether a fiscal estimate was added before the hearing can ask Blass at 301-645-0653 or blassk@CharlesCountyMD.gov.
How to weigh in
- In person: Sign up starting 5:30 p.m. Oct. 27 at the Charles County Government Building. Sign-up closes when the 6 p.m. hearing begins. Each speaker gets three minutes.
- Online: Call 240-776-6709 between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Oct. 27 to register. You will get a link to testify between 6 and 9 p.m., after in-person speakers.
- In writing or by voicemail: Comments are accepted through 5 p.m. Oct. 27 at CharlesCountyMD.info/ZTA26-191, by voicemail at 301-645-0652, or by mail to Commissioners of Charles County, 200 Baltimore St., La Plata, MD 20646. Mailed comments must arrive by Oct. 27.
