By Adam Pagnucco.
Last night, County Executive Marc Elrich sent out a blast email with the subject line, “Purple Line Could Provide Major Opportunities for Housing and Businesses.” The text of the email said, “The future Purple Line could provide great opportunities for affordable housing and businesses, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich says this week.” This is the most positive message I believe I have ever seen from Elrich on the Purple Line.
But the email links to a video in which Elrich unveils his deeper thoughts about the project. Those thoughts include:
Stakeholders in the Purple Line met this week to learn about a new report prepared by the University of Maryland focused on equity and sustained development along the upcoming public transportation corridor and it was prepared by University of Maryland. Once it’s complete, Silver Spring will be home to eight of the ten Montgomery County stops. This project has the potential to touch so many lives in our region, from those who seek new job opportunities to businesses eager to find new customers. I think it’s important to have a report like this come out long before the first trains roll between Montgomery and Prince George’s County. We must have a plan so that no group is left out with so many opportunities ahead. I remain highly concerned about the impact of speculative real estate development along the corridor and what that impact will have on residential and commercial rents. The Purple Line corridor may well be the ideal corridor in which to pilot residential and commercial rent stabilization. Many of the neighborhoods along this corridor will face intense gentrification pressures unless we enact policies to protect the people living along that route now.
Let’s review Elrich’s history with the Purple Line. He has not been an outright opponent of the project, at least not openly, but he has had some issues with it. In 2009, when he was on the county council, Elrich and Council Member Roger Berliner asked the state to single-track the Purple Line along the Georgetown Branch to reduce destruction of trees. The state rejected the proposal because they believed it would lead to longer travel times, less frequent service, lower passenger capacity and less operational and maintenance flexibility. Last year, Elrich asked the state to single-track the Purple Line again, this time through a tunnel under Downtown Bethesda, and the state again said no. Finally, as a council member, Elrich voted against numerous master plans allowing for increased density near Purple Line stations – the very plans allowing for the “great opportunities” he now praises.
All of the above pale beside Elrich’s most famous remarks about the Purple Line in which he claimed that it would lead to “ethnic cleansing.” In a 2017 candidate forum, Elrich said:
I support rent stabilization and I think we need to be honest with ourselves about this. If we throw up our hands about this and say the market will determine the price of housing and the market alone will determine that, then we are going to wipe out neighborhood after neighborhood in Montgomery County. If you did that, then if you did not put rent stabilization around the Purple Line stops, for example, then the neighborhoods around the Purple Line will not continue to exist. They will be bought, they will be repurposed and they will go to other people.
When we did the Long Branch plan, and Park and Planning came in and said we want to rezone all the existing housing in Long Branch, I accused the Planning Board of ethnic cleansing. And I said some people do it with the gun, you guys are doing it with the pen but the truth is those folks would be gone and they would be gone forever…
Elrich may be polishing his message better now, but he has not changed his mind about the Purple Line. He believes that “speculative real estate development” will cause “intense gentrification” unless rent control is enacted, and he believes that applies to both residences and businesses. Elrich has supported rent control through his entire career but has not attempted to introduce it at the county level for lack of support at the county council. The advent of the Purple Line, an influx of new council members and rising rents exacerbated by global inflationary pressures are changing the politics of rent control. Elrich knows it and so do the groups who are pushing for it.
Rent control will be one of the most hotly debated topics facing the next county council. For good or bad, its adoption would be a history-making event for Montgomery County. Let’s keep an eye on it as the day of reckoning approaches.