An unidentified speaker, a resident, told the St. Mary's County meeting that modular houses and tiny-home developments could help address local housing affordability, noting that “Amazon...sell[s] houses now” and that some tiny-home communities near North Carolina seaside areas offer homes he said were priced about $90,000.

The resident said the county does not build housing and instead uses regulations and tax incentives to encourage private developers. He said developers had told him they could not make money building lower-cost homes and that prices for new houses “gotta be $500,000-plus.” He added a personal anecdote to illustrate long-term price changes, saying he bought a 2-bedroom condo in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1972 for $16,000 and later paid $24,000 for a 3-bedroom house.

The resident described modular houses as three-bedroom, two-bath units that fold out, comparing them to earlier mail-order house models, and pointed to tiny-house developments he observed in North Carolina where residents live year-round rather than using units as vacation cottages. He said those smaller units appeared to house lower-income residents who otherwise could not afford conventional housing.

He framed two obstacles to broader use of these housing types in St. Mary's County: the cost and complexity of local construction requirements and the limited role of county government in producing housing. “The county does not build housing. We don't have any funds,” he said, describing the county’s options as regulatory changes and tax breaks to encourage developers rather than direct construction.

The remarks were offered as public comment rather than as a formal proposal; no motion or vote followed from the transcript segment.