CHS Plan Overview

Every resident in the County deserves a decent, affordable home as the pathway to achieving economic security, a higher quality of life and a sense of stability—that’s a fundamental principle for leaders in Prince George’s County.

Prince George’s County—as a community—is undertaking a planning process to set a vision, define our challenges, identify our assets related to housing, and develop new or modified approaches to ensure we can offer affordable, high-quality, housing options for a range of income levels, preferences, and phases of life. This process will culminate in the County’s Comprehensive Housing Strategy (CHS), which will help guide the County’s and its partners’ housing investments over the next 10 years.

The Comprehensive Housing Strategy was officially commissioned by the County Council through Resolution CR-13-2016 in March 2016. This resolution established an Ad Hoc Subcommittee to guide development of the strategy. The resolution sets a vision for what the final strategy will entail: “The development of the CHS will reflect current and future housing needs, consider regional realities, existing strategies and local challenges, and inform parties of housing development decision-making processes.”

In addition to the Ad Hoc Subcommittee, strategy development will be guided by the Department of Housing and Community Development staff, a project team of seasoned subject-matter experts led by Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., and an advisory group, representing various interests across the County. Through community engagement, through public meetings, surveys, focus groups, among other touchpoints, this process will be ultimately guided by people who live and work in Prince George’s County. We hope you’ll become and stay actively involved in this process.

What will the Comprehensive Housing Strategy accomplish? First, it will articulate our collective community vision about how and why we should invest in housing. It will also connect those investments to other assets that build dynamic and attractive communities, like access to transportation and job centers, high-quality education options, and recreation and open spaces.

It will also help us better define and understand the challenges that we are trying to solve, by assessing the County’s current and future housing needs for renters and homeowners. We’ll consider those needs in relation to opportunity, using housing as a platform to help our residents meet their highest potential. We’ll also consider how the County’s housing market—including new housing and economic development projects—may suggest a need for new or modified approaches.

Together, we’ll build an understanding of the barriers and assets that already exist to help us realize greater housing affordability and a range of housing options. And together, we’ll identify ways to begin to address these challenges and capitalize on these assets.

Using this information, along with community input, the Comprehensive Housing Strategy will outline an actionable set of policy and programmatic approaches to help guide future housing investments in Prince George’s County. It will serve as the “roadmap” to help direct our path to using housing to realize our vision of becoming a community of choice in the DC metropolitan region.