Maryland is in the middle of a full‑blown housing crisis. For 12 straight years, more Marylanders have left the state than moved in, and the trend is accelerating.
As Comptroller Brooke Lierman explains, it’s not just retirees heading south. Younger residents and middle‑income families are leaving too, taking billions in economic activity with them. “I was particularly disconcerted to see how many younger Marylanders are moving away,” she says.
At the center of the problem: Maryland simply hasn’t built enough homes. The state is short roughly 100,000 units today, and needs 590,000 new homes by 2045 to meet projected demand. But for decades, a patchwork of zoning rules, local veto points, and well‑intentioned but restrictive smart‑growth policies have made it harder — not easier — to build where people actually want to live.
As Housing Secretary Jake Day puts it, “We’ve done a fantastic job telling people where they can’t build… we never finished the equation.”
In this episode of Maryland Now, hosts Dori Henry, Josh Kurtz, and David Nitkin unpack how Maryland got here, why the state’s “culture of permission” makes development so difficult, and what lawmakers are proposing this session to finally break the logjam.
Key quotes from this episode
Brooke Lierman, Maryland Comptroller
When we undergo a new census in 2030…I think it is very likely that we will lose population relative to these other states, and then we will lose a congressional seat, and then we will lose electoral college power. So the decisions that we are making now on a local level [and] on a state level will have national implications and will change what the country looks like.
Nick Redding, President and CEO of Preservation Maryland
There’s two sides to… smart growth, like a mathematic formula. You have the one side which is let’s not sprawl out, but you have the other side of it that says we need to make sure that we’re making it simpler; we’re taking down barriers to growing within areas where we want to see growth.
Jake Day, Maryland Secretary of Housing and Community Development
I would suggest that we’re at a place where local government hasn’t gotten it right and state government has a role to play. We have a reasonable expectation to have a seat at the table when local government says, this is our authority, and they’re still not acting to address the crisis.
Tom Coale, attorney and housing advocate
People presume that if they have not given their permission, that another property owner should not be able to dispose of their land as they see fit….We’ve created a process where the other side can hire an attorney. They can delay that project for five or six years. And as most people will tell you, if we delay a project five or six years, you’ll probably kill it. Because time kills all deals.
Christopher Mfume, founder of Civic Group development
If we allow projects to be slowed down or, worse, killed because we’re not focusing more on the greater good rather than an individual’s qualm with the development, the end result is that housing becomes less affordable.
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