Maryland housing chief: "We must build more homes" and states steps to speed production

Maryland Secretary of Housing and Community Development Jake Day urged attendees at a Saint Mary's College housing symposium to accelerate housing production statewide, saying the most critical step to lower rents and mortgages is to "build more homes." Day summarized recent state actions intended to speed housing and reduce costs and outlined the scale of the shortfall the state faces.

Day said the state projects an additional need of 184,784 housing units by 2030 and that meeting that figure would require doubling Maryland's current annual production and permitting pace. He described the problem as partly regulatory: "that layering effect creates the overwhelming barrier and set of obstacles that makes it more expensive and time consuming to be able to build housing in Maryland." He urged sustained policy and budgetary action rather than short-term fixes.

Highlighting recent policy steps, Day noted Maryland's 2024 housing legislative package and the creation of the nation's first statewide office of tenant-landlord affairs and a housing ombudsman to help projects navigate permitting. He described the Housing Certainty Act, now law, as protecting projects from retroactive rule changes once a substantially complete application is filed, a change he said reduces risk for developers and owners.

Day also cited an executive action—the "Housing Starts Here" executive order—that directs state agencies to identify and speed use of state-owned property for housing and to modernize permitting by allowing concurrent and digital reviews. He said the administration is tying production targets to funding priorities: jurisdictions that meet agreed annual production goals would receive priority for state housing dollars and "leadership awards." Day said the revised Qualified Allocation Plan will emphasize readiness and co-location of services (libraries, fresh food access, childcare) and that roughly $300 million of low-income housing tax-credit allocation will be guided by the new criteria.

On specific proposals, Day discussed the failed Starter and Silver Homes Act and said it would have helped create smaller starter homes and add roughly 8,000 units per year; he described that setback as temporary and signaled the administration intends to continue pursuing similar reforms. He also described a recently passed transit-oriented housing measure that he said could unlock thousands of housing units and generate substantial tax revenues when built.

In a brief audience exchange, Day responded to a question about infrastructure and traffic by saying, from an implementation perspective, housing is often built before public-works upgrades are executed and that delays such as moratoria or sequential permitting are harmful. He invited the public and local officials to work with the new housing ombudsman and state agencies to identify permitting "black holes"—including county health and MDE-related gaps—that impede projects.

Day closed by urging local advocacy for state-level funding and by calling for a cultural shift toward more middle-housing types, saying, "If we want Maryland to be economically successful and to attract people, we have to be the place that responds to their most pressing need, which is housing them." The symposium moved on to county speakers and a panel of local developers, housing advocates and state staff for more detailed discussion of local constraints.