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The Briefing Room: The Hemlock Grove Playbook
Description
For the final episode of The Briefing Room's housing finance series, the conversation heads west to Garrett County, where local leaders are putting many of the tools explored throughout the series into practice.
Dom Butchko and Baltimore County Housing and Community Development Director Terry Hickey are joined by Garrett County Commissioner Paul Edwards and Liz Georg of the Garrett County Housing Commission to explore Hemlock Grove, an innovative housing development designed to address a challenge familiar to communities across Maryland: local wages struggling to keep pace with the cost of housing.
The conversation examines the unique pressures shaping Garrett County's housing market, including the influence of Deep Creek Lake, limited infrastructure, and the challenge of retaining young professionals and families. Paul and Liz walk through how local government, nonprofits, community partners, and a newly created land trust came together to reduce development costs and create homes priced significantly below the surrounding market.
Along the way, they unpack how the land trust model can preserve affordability across generations, lessons learned from more than a decade of planning, and opportunities to strengthen Maryland's land trust framework for other jurisdictions looking to replicate the approach. It's a fitting conclusion to the housing finance series: a look at what happens when the financing, policy, partnerships, and local decision-making explored over seven episodes come together on the ground.
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