In Part 1 of this series we described the nature of deed restrictions, and in Part 2 we described some of the immediate impacts of unilaterally removing those restrictions. In this post we discuss the conditions leading to HB1300 came to be, and who is responsible for those conditions.
Recall that HB1300 voids restrictions appearing in deeds and covenants, particularly those restrictions that prohibit dense housing on lots otherwise dedicated to single-family dwellings (SFD). Progressives have been promoting HB1300 as a remedy to the implicit racism in deed restrictions. They claim that by restricting construction to SFDs, developers and existing residents are implicitly placing economic barriers on buyers of color. This is nonsense. For one thing, the progressives as a group are ever more angry, bigoted, and entitled. You see it at the LGBT counter-demonstrations in front of MCPS headquarters, you see it in CM Kristin Mink, and you see it in the location of the Purple Line stations. On that basis alone the progressives have relinquished the ability to identify who is a racist quite some time ago.
For another thing, the very progressives who are proposing HB1300 as a remedy for “racist” restrictions have been actively supporting these restrictions. The county government funds the schools, streets, and water/sewer in these restricted neighborhoods. If they really believed SFDs were designed only for the racist, high-earning, lily white demographic, they wouldn’t be funding the BCC High School cluster.
Here is where it gets nasty. One stipulation of HB1300 is that no SFD restrictions executed after October 1, 2024 can be enforced, and that’s perfectly legitimate. In these cases there are no existing buyers whose property rights are unilaterally revoked. While all the progressives were chasing after forced LGBT studies, defying federal immigration laws, and calling everyone different from them a racist—instead of that, or while doing all that, they could have passed a prohibition on such restrictions as far back as 1978. But they didn’t. Since that time, at least 70,000 SFDs were constructed. Sidney Katz has been on the county council since 2014, a full decade, and not once even mentioned the matter of deed restrictions. Marc Elrich has been involved in local politics for 35 years, and he never proposed prohibiting future restrictions. All homeowners who fear an adverse effect from HB1300 need to think really hard why they supported Elrich and the Democrats who let this situation fester for so long.
