A decade ago, Baltimore County struck an agreement with the federal government to improve its affordable housing strategy.
By almost every metric, it hasn’t worked.
Today, Baltimore County leads Maryland in evictions, according to state data. County residents are having more trouble affording rent than many other Maryland tenants, U.S. Census data shows.
And a December report commissioned by the county found it to be short at least 19,000 homes for low-income families — far more than what it has agreed to develop.
So what happened? Baltimore County leaders argue they are digging out of a hole that long predates them. And they say the 2016 settlement agreement has onerous stipulations that make it hard to build what the county really needs.
“What we really want to do is get this outdated — but, at the time, really justified — document behind us,” said Terry Hickey, Baltimore County’s top housing official.
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The county is largely on track to meet the terms of the agreement by its expiration in 2028, but despite the federal intervention, the county’s housing needs have worsened, critics say.
Scott Gottbreht, assistant secretary of policy at the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development, said Baltimore County needs two missing ingredients: “boldness and spine.”
“Unless there can be a rebalancing of the equation,” Gottbreht said, “then things are going to get worse and worse for everybody.”
Long-standing housing issues
Baltimore County’s housing troubles aren’t new.
After a wave of people left Baltimore City for the county in the 1960s, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found in 1970 that county leaders used zoning laws and highway construction to limit growth in existing Black neighborhoods and that landlords often refused to lease properties to renters who used housing vouchers.
Long-standing housing tensions hit a boiling point in 2011 when community advocates filed an administrative complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Four plaintiffs — all Black women with children, and two with mobility disabilities — accused the county of fair housing violations, saying officials deliberately worked to limit affordable options to keep out Black and low-income households.
That prompted Baltimore County to commit in 2016 to spending at least $30 million to build 1,000 new affordable homes over the next 12 years. Those are defined as homes for people who earn less than 60% of the area median income, which was about $73,000 in 2016.
The agreement specifies where to build those units and requires that about half have three or more bedrooms to accommodate families. Those units might not be as necessary since the county’s population of older adults is growing, county officials argue.
Hickey said the county has exceeded the 1,000-unit goal and is working to reach the rest of the requirements.
It’s not clear how the county plans to carry the torch after the agreement’s expiration, said Roland Patterson Jr., president of the Baltimore County NAACP.
Voters this fall will elect a new county executive and a larger County Council. Patterson said new elected officials could bring a “breath of fresh air” in a county desperate for more direction.
“We need the council in a way we haven’t before,” Patterson said. He called on incoming leaders to add more protections for low-income people facing housing insecurity amid rising costs.
Torrieual and Brandi Woodham and their three school-aged kids live in a two-story rental they say has water damage, bug infestations and collapsed ceilings. And mice.
“My daughter has two drawers full of tutus,” said Brandi Woodham, who lives with multiple sclerosis, “and I go and open her drawer and pick up a tutu and there’s mouse poo.”
The Woodhams, who moved to the area from Arizona in 2021, want out but said they can’t find another similarly sized Baltimore County house in their budget. That’s despite Torrieual Woodham’s job as an assistant manager at the Canton Harris Teeter and a housing voucher that covers a little more than half of the family’s $1,700 rent.
The Woodhams try to save money. But it’s getting increasingly difficult. They’re racing through food stamps and behind on utility bills. For now, they say, they’re stuck.
County resistance
Baltimore County’s housing shortfall has statewide implications.
More young people are leaving Maryland for less expensive areas, according to a 2025 report from the Maryland comptroller’s office, which could affect counties’ tax bases, services and business retention.
Those who stay are making sacrifices, whether that means paying for housing they can’t easily afford or enduring subpar conditions such as overcrowding.
Maryland leaders have pointed to slower housing growth as one reason for the state’s ongoing budget woes. Dwindling state and federal funds mean less wiggle room for counties, which rely on government money to supplement police, road maintenance and schools.
Gottbreht said Baltimore County’s housing policies hamstring its ability to increase affordability. For example, a single County Council member can effectively block development in their district.
The council has allocated too much land for single-family housing — overdoing it by about 66,000 acres, according to a state assessment of housing needs. That report shows the council has also not designated enough space for smaller, less expensive housing such as duplexes or apartments.
The crunch has a “perverse trickle-up effect,” Gottbreht said — forcing residents to compete for limited homes.
“So, in Baltimore County, everyone’s a little bit cost-burdened,” he said.
The state’s third-largest county after Montgomery and Prince George’s, Baltimore County only created a housing department in 2021 — Hickey is its first director — and unlike most large jurisdictions, it doesn’t have a stand-alone public housing authority to manage HUD funds.
Any new housing — affordable or not — animates county residents fearful of school overcrowding and neighborhood change.
The mixed-income, 56-unit Red Maple Place in Towson, delayed by years of unsuccessful legal challenges, is one example of how fierce the debates can be.
There’s no “road map to changing people’s hearts and minds about affordability,” Hickey said. “You need political will.”
At times, residents have equated more housing with crime.
At a public safety meeting at the Perry Hall Family Worship Center in March, Baltimore County resident Noël Schueler complained about housing being built near White Marsh Mall, arguing that it drew more people into the county and created heightened risks.
Her councilman, David Marks, assured her that he used zoning laws to keep development low.
“I have downzoned more land than any other councilman in Baltimore County history,” he said.
County records confirm the Perry Hall Republican downzoned about 4,900 acres in the last rezoning cycle, by far the most of the seven-member body.
Some county leaders have pushed to build more. As county executive, Johnny Olszewski Jr., a Democrat who won a U.S. congressional seat in 2024, signed an order creating an inclusionary housing mandate to help low-income renters.
The order requires developers who receive county subsidies to reserve a portion of units they create for less affluent renters. So far, 542 homes or apartments have been created or preserved as a result of the order, according to the county.
But gridlock persists.
Council members have blocked development in areas with crowded schools and prevented mixed-use development in much of the region.
The stalled Lutherville Station complex, which would replace a declining strip mall with homes and retailers next to a light rail station, has also divided advocates, residents and their elected officials.
Councilman Wade Kach, a Republican who abruptly resigned last week, did not move the project forward. His constituents have installed black yard signs to make their feelings known:
“No apartments, no compromise.”
Few affordable options
In Baltimore County, about a third of the population rents. Around 15% of renters, or 16,500 households, spend more than a third of their income on rent, according to state data, above the federal affordability threshold.
Shakespeare Park Apartments in Randallstown is one of a handful of complexes in the area that houses mostly low-income tenants.
Several former residents told The Banner they faced unfair treatment by management in the past few years, including retaliation and harassment by the property manager.
In the absence of other low-cost housing options, each has had to adjust — quitting jobs they couldn’t access by bus and moving belongings into storage.
Maritza Carrasco filed several code enforcement complaints with Baltimore County after facing health and safety threats at the complex, where she lived for about four years with her son, Jordy.
In late 2023, an administrative judge ordered apartment management to pay a $6,800 fine and correct violations that included water damage and rodents.
Her landlord soon asked her to leave — or face eviction.
After receiving the lease nonrenewal notice in July 2024, Carrasco decided to buy a house. Her mortgage is twice what she used to spend on rent, so she picked up a second job and works seven days a week.
“It’s been hard,” Carrasco said, “a lot of stress.”
Dave Lanzillo, a spokesperson for the company that oversees Shakespeare Park, said the complex takes residents’ concerns seriously. He also said the county’s “real shortage of affordable housing” and tenants’ worsening financial circumstances are “making it harder for many families to find options that work for them.”
Until the county prioritizes affordability, more families can expect to endure similar pressures, said Dan Emmanuel, director of research at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Even though counties across the U.S. are struggling to build affordable housing, Emmanuel said Baltimore County may be especially worse off given its historic aversion to development and its ongoing challenges to accommodate its most vulnerable residents.
“Trying to build 20,000 units of deeply restrictive affordable housing would be tough without the accompanying federal resources,” he said. “That being said, they could do better than 1,000.”
Banner reporter Sapna Bansil contributed to this story.
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