Montgomery County’s Department of Housing and Community Affairs Wins NACo Award for MPDU Application Portal

For Immediate Release: Friday, July 16, 2021

The County’s Department of Housing and Community Affairs (DHCA) has won an award from the National Association of Counties (NACo) for its Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit (MPDU) Application Portal.

“Montgomery County has 20,000 households spending more than half of their income on housing and more than 80 percent of County renters earning up to $70,000 are housing cost burdened.” said Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich. “The new MPDU application portal allows us to better serve people seeking homeownership, improving access for more low- and moderate-income residents to the affordable homeownership opportunities of the MPDU program.”

The online portal was created when Montgomery County closed its offices to the public in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. To continue serving prospective homebuyers and renters of moderately priced dwelling units, DHCA IT staff – in consultation with MPDU program staff – embarked on an ambitious and aggressive project to establish online registration and on-demand training.

In short order, DHCA built a comprehensive online portal at which applicants and program participants can register securely, submit supporting documents, update their information, receive online training, and submit purchase applications. The portal has allowed the MPDU program to maintain levels of individualized service on par with pre-COVID benchmarks.

“Our MPDU application portal provides an even more accessible and cost-effective way for us to serve people in our community,” said DHCA Director Aseem Nigam. “This is one of several upgrades DHCA has implemented recently to improve customer service and efficiencies in ways that benefit renters, homeowners, prospective homeowners and landlords.”

In Montgomery County, every development of 20 or more units must include at least 12.5 percent MPDUs. Since the program’s inception, 5,918 rental MPDUs and 10,515 for-sale MPDUs have been produced. The housing units produced are marketed at controlled prices, which makes them affordable to moderate-income households. For-sale MPDUs are priced for homebuyers earning 70 percent of Area Median Income (AMI). Among rental MPDUs, rents for garden-style apartments are set for renters earning 65 percent of AMI; rents for high-rise apartments are set for renters earning 70 percent of AMI.  

The MPDU program has been in existence for 47 years. For more information about DHCA’s Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit program, visit www.montgomerycountymd.gov/mpdu .

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Release ID: 21-567
Media Contact: Lorraine Driscoll 240-777-3627