In 1973, Montgomery County became the first U.S. jurisdiction to pass a mandatory “inclusionary” zoning law requiring developers to provide below-market housing units in return for increased density. The goal of this Moderately Priced Housing Program was to keep housing costs down. Three decades later, Montgomery County is among the least affordable places to live in the Washington region. The MPHP is still going strong. But a new data-regression study by the Independent Institute of a similar program passed the same year in Palo Alto, Calif., found that such programs do the opposite of what they were intended. “Cities that adopt below-market housing mandates actually drive housing prices up by 20 percent and end up with 10 percent fewer homes,” the Independent Institute concluded. The mandates act like price controls by restricting supply and thus forcing prices up.

SinceMontgomery County’s own policies led to higher prices and fewer affordable homes, county leaders spanning several generations are partially responsible for the recent spike in foreclosures, up 2,000 percent in the third quarter, as exclusively reported by The Examiner’s Kathleen Miller. Lured by lenders hawking adjustable mortgages into buying homes they could not afford, more than a thousand Montgomery County homebuyers were trapped when their initially low interest rates were adjusted upward.