By Adam Pagnucco.
Montgomery Perspective confines nearly all of its content to Montgomery County and the State of Maryland. There is good reason for that – this county and state keep me busy enough! But last Friday’s post MoCo’s Multifamily Construction Market Disappears has circulated via X all over the nation and even into other parts of the world. That makes Montgomery County at least temporarily known around the globe, although perhaps for reasons not desired by our elected officials.
The story’s spread kicked off with this X post by New Hampshire economist Jason Sorens on Saturday.
At this writing, that post all by itself received 113 reposts, 482 likes, 143 bookmarks and more than 82,000 views.
But that was just the beginning. Here are a few more reposts and reactions.
I will never know how many times this post was seen on X, but just the reposts that are visible to me have exceeded 147,000 views.
It’s not possible to tell the locations of most X accounts, but a few locations of those that reposted this story include Austin, TX; Jersey City, NJ; New Hampshire; New Orleans, LA; New York City; Ottawa, ON; Santa Barbara, CA; Santa Clara, CA; and Vermont.
Here’s another data point. This site usually gets very little international traffic. But since the MoCo rent control story was published, we have been getting a measurable uptick in visits from Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom. I can guarantee that these folks aren’t coming in to read Fire Fighters Endorse Friedson.
Montgomery County officials like to think of the county as well known on a big stage. And thanks to County Executive Marc Elrich, who has supported rent control for decades, and Council Members Natali Fani-Gonzalez, Evan Glass, Will Jawando, Sidney Katz, Kristin Mink, Laurie-Anne Sayles and Kate Stewart – all of whom voted to pass rent control – we certainly are. We are now the latest jurisdiction in a long line of them to demonstrate the oft-chronicled damage inflicted by rent control laws on housing supply.
Hopefully the rest of the world will learn from our mistakes even though some of our leaders intend to double down on one of the biggest debacles in recent MoCo history.