Guest column by Gaithersburg City Council Member and council at-large candidate Jim McNulty.
In May of 2003, then-President George W. Bush famously (or infamously?) landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and declared, “Mission Accomplished,” as he announced the end to major combat operations in Iraq. Of course, we all know that operations continued in Iraq for years.
Last week, Montgomery County’s official Facebook page proudly boasted, “Montgomery County’s Rent Stabilization law is working.” It links to a press release on the official County web page, where County Executive Marc Elrich states, “by stopping excessive rent hikes…the law is delivering on [its] promise.”
Is it though?
The press release cites successful mediations by the Office of Rent Stabilization from a small sample of the County’s renters, increased code enforcement, and required fee transparency as evidence of its success. However, none of these consumer protections are connected to actual rent control. Gaithersburg passed similar tenant protections that allow tenants to appeal large rent hikes and require greater fee transparency, along with code enforcement provisions, without setting a cap on rents.
But what about the rent control itself?
After all, the County Executive claimed that the law was stopping excessive rent hikes. However, the press release makes no mention of how much the average cost of rent increased or decreased for the 67,000 units subject to the law since it was enacted. Nor did it give us anything to compare those results against.
So how do we really know?
According to data from CoStar and the Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC), the average rent in Montgomery County since 2024 increased between 1.4% and 2.1%. Not bad—the historical average for Montgomery County is about 2.2%; however, the average rent in Rockville has actually decreased over the last 12 months by 1.4%, and rents in Gaithersburg are also down over the last 12 months, by 0.8%.
And in case we thought perhaps there was a halo effect from the Rent Stabilization law, a quick look at Howard County, which also has market-rate rent, shows rents in Columbia are also down 1.9% over the last year.
Anti-gouging and consumer protections are important. But supply and demand drive the housing market, and since Montgomery County has instituted rent control, new multifamily projects have almost completely dried up. That’s bad news for renters. Even the County’s own Ben Kraft from Montgomery Planning admits, “We have had basically three straight quarters — that’s over nine straight months — of very low, basically zero, rental multifamily housing permitting, which is very concerning.” Even the few subsidized projects that did pull permits at the end of last year are a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed to meet market demand.
Montgomery Perspective lays out the math compared to the rest of the region. In 2019, Montgomery County committed to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments’ (MWCOG) regional housing goal of building 41,000 new housing units by 2030. With the County redlined by those who would finance the “Big Swing” projects that could get us closer to that goal, how do we expect to address the long-term supply-demand imbalance that will continue to drive up the cost of housing in Montgomery County?
With the current rent control policies in place, we won’t.
We all want to address affordability. But instead of declaring victory for what the market was doing on its own, the County should try getting out of its own way, and remove the obstacles that are actively preventing new housing investment in our community.
Jim McNulty is a candidate for Montgomery County Council At-Large and current Gaithersburg City Councilmember. He is also a Realtor® with Jim McNulty Real Estate at Keller Williams Capital Properties.