Almost every day, my partner and I go for a long walk in Sligo Creek Park, which is three blocks from our new house. It's a nice routine during a time when we can't do most normal things. I especially enjoy walking on Sligo Creek Parkway itself, which is one of several streets
Montgomery County has closed to car traffic during the Covid-19 pandemic to give people space to exercise.
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| Enjoying Sligo Creek Park while the parkway is closed to traffic. All photos by the author. |
Of course, while we're supposed to be keeping our distance from people, we run into a lot of friends and neighbors. Last week, a longtime reader asked me, "Why haven't you been writing? I haven't seen anything from you in a while." So, I figured it was worth sharing a few things I've been up to:
- We moved back to Silver Spring in November, and just as I took six months to write about how we moved to North Bethesda last year, I'm gonna take six months to write about that. My partner and I bought a house! While we feel immensely lucky - especially now that we're stuck in the house all the time - the whole experience of finding a place to live reminded us of the need to change the way we talk about housing here, and the desperate need to address our regional housing shortage.
- During the winter, I worked with the Sierra Club's Maryland chapter to produce a series of posts about how to fix Maryland's traffic and housing issues, which you can find on Greater Greater Washington. Here's one looking at the costs of building more highways, things we can do instead of building more highways, and why we need to look at our housing policies as a traffic solution.
- I worked with housing advocates from across Maryland to help Delegate Vaughn Stewart craft the Modest Home Choices Act, which would have created more housing options, and affordable housing options, in Maryland's most jobs-rich and transit-rich communities. While it didn't pass, the resulting Planning for Modest Homes Act will go a long way to addressing our region's rising cost of living.
