Can You Afford to Live in Frederick County?
I just finished reading Frederick Growth Squeezing Residents Out of County from the Washington Post and it left me feeling very sad.
I realized that if we ever want to move from our townhouse to a single family home in Frederick County we may not be able to afford it. We’re already getting killed by city taxes on our home.
Check out some points from the story …
Frederick County’s growth in recent years has been fueled by newcomers who escaped the high cost of housing in Washington’s inner suburbs. Now, the former dairy farming center is becoming more pricey, as transplants from neighboring Montgomery County slowly make it like the place they sought to leave behind.
A recent report by the Frederick County Affordable Housing Council, which is appointed by county and city governments, found that the number of homes is increasing, but the percentage of homes the average family can afford is falling.
In 2000, a family that lived on $60,256 a year might have been able to afford 42 percent of the homes in Frederick County; today, after adjusting incomes for inflation, only about 16 percent of the homes would be in that family’s price range.
The article also talks about teachers, police officers, and firefighters not being able to afford housing where they work. Frederick County is having trouble recruiting teachers because they don’t want to relocate here.
Walter F. Murray, director of the county’s Division of Fire and Rescue Services, said that of 268 full-time firefighters, paramedics, dispatchers and other staff in his division, 126 live outside Frederick.
They are people like Lt. Dan Healy, a career firefighter assigned to Station 15 in New Market. Healy, 32, who grew up in Laurel, joined the Frederick County force about six years ago. He said he makes about $52,000, usually more with overtime. His wife, Kim, 32, looks after their two young children and makes some pocket money selling Mary Kay cosmetics.
“We definitely didn’t want a townhouse or an apartment, and that’s all we could afford,” Healy said.
So the couple and their two young children moved about 30 miles north of Frederick to Littlestown, Pa., near her parents. Their four-bedroom, 2 1/2 -bath colonial cost $142,000 — less than half, he estimates, of what it would take to buy the same thing in Frederick County.
“I got hired here, and I was trying to move up here, and I couldn’t afford it,” Healy said.
If you want to buy a new home in Frederick get ready for the fees …
To pay for schools and libraries, for example, the county charges an impact fee of $10,487 for each new single-family home. The city of Frederick tacks on an additional $4,830 per dwelling for water and $4,950 for sewer. Under former Mayor Jennifer P. Dougherty, city officials also contemplated a transportation impact fee of as much as $10,232 per dwelling.
Such impact fees have been useful in ensuring that services can be improved to support a new home. But the fees also have intensified the affordable housing pinch.
The politicians are suggesting changes but they are not being met with much support. I hope things change. I like living in Frederick County, I hope I can afford to continue to do so.
Regarding the affordable housing problem in Frederick, I am inclined to be more sympathetic to the problems that renters face than those of prospective homebuyers. My husband and I were fortunate enough to buy a house several years before the prices of homes went through the ceiling in Frederick County. My three grown children, however, don’t even DREAM of home ownership. For them, the cost of renting is prohibitive to any type of saving for buying a home of their own anytime in the future, if at all, in Frederick County. My kids have called Frederick their hometown since I moved up here with them when they were all toddlers. One of them even moved to Virginia last year because affordable rental housing was beyond her and her husbands grasp- With rent for apartments even in the more “seedy” apartment complexes now averaging close to $1000 for a simple 2-bedroom apartment, I can’t imagine how other young people who work minimum-wage jobs or even jobs making $15 an hour or more manage to make ends meet. In one of my kids apartment complexes there are several apartments which are 2-bedroom units that are occupied by multiple children and adults- (for example, the apartment above one of them is a 2 bedroom unit with 6 children and 3 adults living in it-!!) I guess THIS is how the low income people manage to live in Frederick County. The neighbors in this apartment complex are all hard-working adults who I have seen come and go early in the morning and return late at night. Most are hispanic and all that I have met are very nice and are just trying to survive. Many do not have transportation, making living outside of Frederick prohibitive to getting to work.
Other friends of my children, some of them adults in their late 20′s to early 30′s, with children, live with THEIR parents, either to save money or enable them to live in Frederick near their places of employment. How sad that some of the people who work in Frederick County, pay Frederick County taxes, and shop in Frederick County establishments, can’t afford to live here.
While people complain about all of the “hand-outs” that low income receive (food stamps, energy assistance, public assistance, medical assistance),it occurs to me that if the cost of renting a home was not so outrageous, some of them would not require “assistance”. The apartment complexes are making money hand-over-fist while the taxpayers have to bear the burden of providing the necessities to these people because money they MIGHT have to spend on utility bills, food, medical care,is going for “rent”. Doesn’t seem fair.
Anyone who is fortunate enough to have the means with which to purchase a home today and is complaining about “affordable home prices” in Frederick does not have my sympathy. Move to Washington County, stop your whining.
I have to aggree that housing for both rental and buying has gone through the roof, but I love living in Frederick.
For me, cost of living discussions always bring to mind old sayings like “Everything is relative” and “It all depends on your perspective.”
As a resident of Damascus–closer to Frederick than down-county Mont. Co., but paying Mont. prices, taxes and fees (w/out the level of services/amenities enjoyed elsewhere in the county, I might add)–the cost of living in Frederick looks pretty good to me.
so if i move to the new community cannon bluff are the city taxes expensive and if so around how much??? please let me know asap. I live in dc and want to move to Frederick but I’m doing my homework. http://www.ryanhomes.com if you dont know cannon bluff! help me pls
Is that neighborhood even in the city limits? I would talk to the builder to get info on what the taxes would be.