2024-04-06 13:02:16
Maryland voters are increasingly concerned with the cost of housing, a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll finds.
Nearly 1 in 5 registered voters cite affordable housing as the state’s top problem, up from 13 percent in 2019 to 19 percent in March. Roughly 3 in 4 voters say Maryland housing is “extremely expensive” or “very expensive,” including most voters in every region of the state. In Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore region of the state, affordable housing outpaces crime as voters’ top worry.
The poll finds most voters feel several cost-of-living pressures and report concern over the cost of gasoline, groceries and child care, with the most pronounced concerns regarding the expenses of food and housing.
Maryland voters also show a decline in optimism in the six years since The Post-UMD poll last asked regarding their views on the direction of the state. Forty-six percent of voters say they think the state is moving in the right direction, down from 63 percent in 2018. Forty-four percent say the state is on the wrong track, up from 29 percent in 2018.
Though the downward shift in optimism follows the pandemic and the economic turbulence it brought, Maryland voters statewide cite crime as their top concern — followed by housing. Jobs and the economy come in fifth place, behind public education and taxes.
Dylan Mendes, a 23-year-old software engineer from Clarksburg, said access to affordable places to live is tied with public education for his most pressing concern. Mendes, a registered Democrat, said he would have to move regarding 40 minutes farther away from D.C. to find an apartment that he might afford on his own.
“That’s a really pressing issue for me,” he said.
Maryland leaders have homed in on economic issues over the past year, with Gov. Wes Moore (D) emphasizing housing and child care as “two of the biggest strains on family’s bank accounts” and proposing policies to start addressing them. Comptroller Brooke Lierman (D) released a detailed “State of the Economy” report in January that found lower- and middle-income workers left the state because of housing costs. The report attributed some of the state’s lackluster growth to affordable housing problems and lack of access to child care.
Salisbury resident Gavin Hancock, 26, said the rising cost of living has made everything from grocery shopping to moving out of his parent’s house difficult. Hancock said he often spends $50 or $60 on a bag or two filled with food that doesn’t last long.
“Gas prices, groceries, renting is practically impossible for people with low-income jobs,” said Hancock, a registered Democrat who works at a local Domino’s. “It’s just getting too expensive.”
About 7 in 10 Maryland voters say groceries are at least very expensive in their communities, including regarding 4 in 10 who say it is extremely expensive. Inflation, which picked up in the years following the pandemic but has cooled in recent months, has led to rising food costs nationwide. In the Baltimore and Washington metro areas, prices for food prepared at home were up less than half a percentage point from February 2023 to February 2024, but since 2019 they are up 19 percent in the D.C. area and 24 percent in the Baltimore area, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
And although gas prices in Maryland have fallen from a record high of $5.02 in June 2022, regarding half of the state’s voters say gas is at least very expensive. Republicans are much more likely to say gas is very or extremely expensive, at 69 percent, compared to 46 percent of Democrats and 42 percent of independents. The share saying gas is at least very expensive peaks among 2020 Trump voters, 72 percent of whom say it is very or extremely expensive, compared to 39 percent of Biden voters. According to AAAgas prices in Maryland are regarding the same as they were a year ago, costing an average of $3.55 per gallon.
Hancock said jobs and the economy are his top concern, but that housing costs sting. He said he started looking for a place of his own in Salisbury, a city on the Eastern Shore, but the rents for apartments and small houses in his community would require that he get two or three roommates.
“The rent is way too high in Maryland for most,” he said.
The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Maryland rose regarding 19 percent between 2017 and 2022, from $1,118 to $1,330, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Rents rose at similar rates in the D.C. and Baltimore metro areas, census data shows, though rents in the suburbs around the District were higher to begin with.
According to The Post-UMD poll, there is broad support among Maryland voters for building denser housing — such as apartments, duplexes and townhouses — near transit stations in the state, with 68 percent of registered voters supporting this, including over 6 in 10 across regions and majorities across political parties, age groups and levels of education. However, 50 percent oppose building more apartment buildings in their own communities.
About 7 in 10 Maryland voters support building more single-family homes in their community, 55 percent support building more townhouses, 47 percent support building more manufactured or factory-built homes and 42 percent support building more apartment buildings.
Charisse Lue, a registered Democrat and Baltimore City lawyer who has lived in Maryland for a little over a decade said she welcomes the governor’s focus on issues like affordable housing — her top concern. Lue works for a nonprofit that helps Baltimore renters navigate thorny housing issues, including evictions, and said past administrations have not paid enough attention to housing issues.
She said it is still early in Moore’s tenure, and time needs to pass before she can cast final judgment on whether he has been effective at leading the state into a better position.
“Let’s see what gets done,” she said. Lue said she hopes the administration’s next focus following housing will be addressing the state’s swiftly rising cost of living so that working class people can find financial security. “Maryland is an expensive state, and people’s wages need to match that,” she said.
Registered Democrat Debbie Maddage, 50, said she is more of a swing voter than a party loyalist. The Leonardtown resident said she voted for Moore in 2022 and has been a longtime supporter of Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), but she also voted for Larry Hogan (R) for governor and twice cast a ballot for Donald Trump (R) for president.
No issue facing Maryland has rankled Maddage more than the lack of affordable housing. Although she owns her home with her husband, Maddage said she has seen family members struggle to find comfortable places to rent without paying astronomical prices.
As tenants struggled with rent increases during the economic turmoil of the pandemic, the political movement for renter protections gained steam. Rent strikes, where tenant associations withhold payments to protest poor living conditions or large rent hikes, have become increasingly common. While local governments, including Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, have passed legislation limiting rent increases in recent years, there is no such statewide cap.
“Maryland is not rent controlled, and it should be,” Maddage said. “There are a lot of landlords out there that are charging ridiculous amounts of money.”
Another cost of living issue dogging many Marylanders is child care. More than half (56 percent) say child care is very or extremely expensive, rising to 72 percent among parents with children at home, and to 80 percent among parents who have tried to find child care at some point. Similarly, 81 percent of parents who have tried to find child care in Maryland say it was difficult to find an affordable option, including half who say it was “very difficult.”
The comptroller’s economic report found that 100,000 Maryland women have dropped out of the workforce between 2019 and 2021, peaking among those ages 25 to 34 — a rate twice as high as the national average. While industries that disproportionately employ women were hardest hit by the pandemic, the report found, rising child-care costs complicated the math for mothers seeking to rejoin the workforce: Between 2019 and 2023, the average annual cost of child care increased by at least 14 percent and as much as 30 percent.
Lisa Maragh, 49, of Lexington Park was among those who said good-quality and affordable child care was hard to find. When she had to return to work as a dental assistant following the birth of her first son, Maragh said she struggled “finding good day care and finding good day care that was affordable.”
“That was one of the worst things I went through,” as a first-time parent, she said. Maragh, who now has three sons, said that she wishes the state did more to support working parents.
The poll was conducted March 5-12 by The Post and the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, among a random sample of 1,004 Maryland registered voters. Overall results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points. Interviews were conducted by live callers on cellphones, landlines and online through a texted invitation sent to cellphones.
Sonia Vargas contributed to this report.
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