The Housing Opportunities Commission of Montgomery County (HOC) was born 50 years ago in 1974, but did you know – or do you remember – that year is noteworthy for several other reasons? True facts about 1974:

1. “Hammerin’” Hank Aaron, the trailblazing African American baseball player, launched his then-record-setting 715th home run over the left-centerfield wall at Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium (he was later inducted into both the Negro American League and the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame).
2. Hungarian architecture professor Ernõ Rubik invented a multi-colored cube puzzle, which he used as a learning exercise to teach his students about three-dimensional spaces.
3. Congress made housing discrimination on the basis of sex and credit against women illegal. It passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, abolishing banks’ practice of requiring single, widowed or divorced women to have a man cosign their credit application.

Those three milestones, incongruous at first glance, actually are similar in that they are accomplishments that once were considered unachievable. In that way, they also reflect the successes of HOC.

In its first six years, the Housing Authority of Montgomery County (HAMC) – predecessor to HOC – was like public housing authorities everywhere, using federal dollars to build and acquire public housing.

Our first property was Elizabeth House in downtown Silver Spring. In addition to providing 160 apartment homes, that building was HAMC’s first headquarters.

Breaking New Ground

In the early 1970s Montgomery County activist and Council Member Elizabeth Scull (for whom Elizabeth House was named) and others became concerned that affordable housing developments were being clustered to create so-called “concentrations of poverty.” Scull, along with HOC’s first executive director, Bernard Tetrault, spearheaded passage ofa new Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit (MPDU) ordinance, which came to be known as “inclusionary zoning.” It requires developers to set aside a portion of the homes they build to be rented or sold at below-market prices. Importantly, it allowed affordable housing to be interspersed in new developments throughout Montgomery County’s many neighborhoods.

With its 1974 conversion into the Housing Opportunities Commission the new quasi-governmental entity continued to be the County’s Public Housing Authority, but with a far broader mandate: find opportunities for affordable housing through innovative financing, purchasing MPDUs to rent to low-income families and pursuing mixed-income development.

Much like “conventional wisdom” held that Babe Ruth’s home run record – which stood for 39 years – would never be broken and the absurdity that women needed men to guarantee their credit, most thought that “deconcentrating” poverty could never be achieved. Montgomery County defied that notion, so successfully that our model has been adopted by scores of jurisdictions nationwide. But ours remains by far the nation’s largest inclusionary zoning program.

Over the years, as federal dollars became scarcer and scarcer, HOC time and again has picked up the Rubik’s cube that is affordable housing financing, twisted it, turned it and looked at it from all sides to develop more innovative solutions.

In 1989 the Commission developed Timberlawn Crescent in North Bethesda as a mixed-income property without federal subsidies. Timberlawn pioneered a model that focused on building affordable housing that was indistinguishable from high-end market-rate housing.

HOCP: Responding To The Community’s Needs

In 1999 HOC innovated yet again, this time by forming the non-profit affiliate Housing Opportunities Community Partners, Inc. (HOCP) to provide supportive services to HOC residents. The goal: to change the trajectory of residents’ lives by empowering their self-sufficiency. As it celebrates its silver anniversary this year, HOCP counts into the thousands the number of Montgomery County residents it has helped rise up.

New Headline-Grabbing Mixed-Use

HOC’s latest twist of the cube in affordable housing already is attracting attention nationwide. The Laureate is our brand new 268-unit mixed-income, mixed-use, new construction project near the Metro red line’s Shady Grove Station in Derwood opened its doors in 2023.

This is the first new development to utilize the County’s Housing Production Fund (HPF). The Laureate, built in partnership with Bozutto and EYA, is a key component of Montgomery County’s Westside master development plan but also is a demonstration of the viability of the HPF concept. The HPF provides revolving, low-cost, construction-period financing for the development of affordable, multi-family housing.

The ribbon at The Laureate had barely been cut when Delta Associates lauded HOC with its 27th Annual Apartment and Condominium Industry Award for Excellence, recognizing the importance and value of HOC’s HPF innovation.

The New York Times also took note of the unique promise that The Laureate and our HPF represent by spotlighting them in an in-depth August 2023 feature article.

The Next 50 Years

There are over 37,000 Montgomery County residents in need of housing. All of us at HOC and HOCP have committed to continue innovating and working harder and smarter – to continually reimagining the Rubik’s cube of affordable housing – to put roofs over our neighbors’ heads and, like Hammerin’ Hank, to knocking it out of the park with the services we provide to help them succeed.