Secretary tours St. Mary's with aim at reducing housing shortage

St. Mary’s County has experienced a housing shortage for years but steps are underway to help fix the problem.

And one of those steps came in the form of Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development Secretary Jake Day and his team, who toured the county Tuesday afternoon.

The tour was the 13th stop in the state housing department’s Day Trip series, which allows the housing secretary and his senior staff to meet with local officials and share ways the department can help their communities.

“We have been all over the state talking about the housing crisis and how it’s crushing Maryland families, how rents are high, how housing prices are high, interest rates are high, inflation is high and construction costs are high,” Day said moments before stepping on the bus at the end of the day.

A news release said from fiscal 2020 to 2024, the DHCD has provided more than $32 million in financial support for affordable housing, improvements for broadband infrastructure and neighborhood revitalization in St. Mary’s County.

Tuesday’s visit began with a walking tour of Leonardtown, which Day said was “one of the prettiest main streets I’ve ever seen.”

The driving tour included a stop at a Lexington Park apartment complex before a roundtable discussion at a local restaurant between several local organizations.

“I think [today] was fantastic because we have a lot of activity happening in our sustainable communities whether it’s Leonardtown or Lexington Park,” Kellie Hinkle, deputy director of the county’s economic development department, said. “I think sometimes when you’re at the 100,000-foot view it’s hard to see everything that’s happening and Lexington Park is at a disadvantage because there’s no central form of government. It doesn’t have its own structure, and so we feel like some days we’re knitting a patchwork quilt together and they’re looking at it from this perspective today … that we’re actually able to stitch some of those squares together.”

Commissioner Mike Hewitt (R) told Day 2,000 people have been on a housing-assistance wait list for the past seven years, about the eviction scare at the Lord Calvert mobile home park and that the county shares a housing director with Calvert County.

“We saw some nice projects in Calvert. We’d really like to see those projects in St. Mary’s County,” Hewitt said. “My point is we need your help. We want to make this work.”

“As a former mayor [of Salisbury], we created a department of housing and community development in our city, so I have first-hand experience with your frustration,” Day said. “It’s a challenging situation to be in. The only way we get out of a housing crisis is to have enough housing.”

Day gave the county praise for its willingness to work on the housing shortage.

“The [county’s] attitude of ‘We’re going to do something about it’ is just worlds apart from many of your competitor communities,” Day said. “When I was mayor it was, ‘Hey we’re in competitions. I want talent, I want jobs, I want people, I want investment, I want money.’”

So does the secretary believe the housing shortage can be fixed?

“Oh my gosh, yes,” he said. “I often say there’s two types of communities: Growing and dying. There’s no in-between, there’s no third choice; you’re one or the other. This is a growing community, this is a community that has committed itself to that growth. Leonardtown and Lexington Park have different needs maybe, but that kind of leadership is not a given.”

“Housing, whether we’re talking about affordable or workforce housing, it is a challenge in St. Mary’s County, and it’s a challenge across the United States,” Hinkle said. “So yeah, it is a big challenge. But we’ll figure it out with the people that were in that room.”