State and local housing and planning officials say there is an urgent need to build more housing supply to start bringing down Maryland’s skyrocketing housing costs as soon as possible.
But there are two major hurdles for getting those projects started: financing new affordable housing projects and navigating through gummed-up permitting processes, according to two different housing-related forums at the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference Friday.
State officials on both panels said that counties should consider ways to boost financing options or speed up the permitting process if Maryland is to start chipping away at the estimated 100,000 housing unit shortage.
In a panel focused on speeding up county-level permitting for new development, Planning Secretary Rebecca Flora said department officials learned other states improved their permitting timelines by simply making the process more transparent while creating a report released this year.
Click here to read the rest of the article written by Danielle Brown over at Maryland Matters
