It takes a salary of $30.42 per hour, or an annual income of $63,582, to comfortably afford a one-bedroom apartment in Carroll County, according to the findings of a new housing study.

The monthly rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the county averages $1,582, and the average wage for a renter in Carroll County is $25.40 an hour.

“You can see at an average renter wage, a Carroll County renter can’t afford an apartment without spending 30% of their income on their housing,” Jeremy Gray of Mosaic Community Planning LLC said at a meeting of the Board of Carroll County Commissioners on Thursday. “If you look at minimum wage earners, minimum wage being $15 an hour in Maryland, they’re going to have even greater affordability challenges.

“You would need to work 100 hours a week at minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom rent in Carroll County,” Gray said. “You can split that between two wage earners, and that’s maybe 50 hours a week. That’s still a steep hill to climb at a minimum wage.”

The commissioners voted in November 2023 to hire Mosaic Community Planning, a consulting firm, to conduct a survey and analyze the answers, at a cost of $81,160.

The information obtained from the survey will be a part of the county’s update of its master plan, a framework for future development decisions. The plan was last updated in 2015, and preparations are under way for another update.

The plan will map out how land is used in the future and will include a component on the types of housing needed for seniors, families and young couples.

The Carroll County Housing Study is intended to identify the need for affordable and age-restricted housing. The study will also meet the requirements of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Act of 2015, which requires an extensive analysis of local fair housing concerns, and a remedy to address those concerns, a county document states. The Fair Housing Act requires the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and recipients of federal financial assistance, to do more than simply not discriminate.

The study asked residents to answer a series of questions about their own housing situation. They were asked to describe their current housing, whether they have moved in the last five years, and their opinion on the affordability of housing for seniors and young families.

“We had 1,464 survey responses, which for a community of your size I think is a really good response,” Gray said.

The county’s projected population ‘ for 2024 is 183,960 residents.

Gray said 29% of those who responded to the survey said there needs to be more housing for seniors in the county. Another 28% said smaller homes, cottages and townhouses are needed, and 24% said the county needs more apartments priced for the average worker. Finally, 61% said the county does not need any more luxury apartments and 58% said no more large, single-family homes.

“These results were somewhat surprising,” Gray said. “We typically don’t find this degree of appetite for changes to the housing stock. I think it’s interesting and it also provides an opportunity to Carroll County to make some headway here, because I believe from our survey responses, the community seems to support a diversification of the housing stock.”

But income is a concern. Younger and less affluent residents making an annual salary of $50,000 or less, cited the need for more “workforce” apartments.

Older and more affluent residents, earning an annual salary of $100,000 or more, cited the need for more senior housing.

The survey also looked at housing costs in the county from 2015 to 2024.

In July 2024, the typical home value in Carroll County was $470,000. That’s 50% greater than it was in July of 2015.

Sykesville has the highest home values in the county, with Taneytown and Hampstead having the lowest.

The average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,943. That means an individual needs an annual income of $77,720 or $37.37 an hour, to comfortably afford a two-bedroom unit. Average rent for a three-bedroom apartment is $2,519 a month, with a renter needing an annual income of $100,960 or $48.44 an hour.

Though commissioners made no final decisions on Thursday, they did comment.

“Truth be told when it comes to this housing study, I am the Grinch in this room right now,” said District 4 Commissioner Michael Guerin, who opposed the study. “I didn’t want to spend the money to do it, because I had a feeling where we would get at. With that said, a lot of people in this room have put a lot of work into it.

“Two things that jump out to me,” he said. “One being the fact that you have people already living in the county that don’t want to see a change unless it’s for the better. They don’t want to see more traffic, more overcrowded schools. There’s always going to be this issue of affordability. I still can’t get my head around on how we’re going to make things affordable in a state that you can barely afford to live in. I struggle with this issue of affordability, because I don’t see Maryland as an affordable place to live unless you’re very wealthy or you’re getting a lot of assistance, which is a shame. It shouldn’t be that way. With that said, I do appreciate the way you put everything together.”

Developers, homebuilders and residents also responded.

“Since I’ve been doing business in Carroll County, I’ve heard a lot about the expansion of the commercial base, and I think it’s very important to understand the expansion to the commercial base also addresses an increase in jobs,” Steven McCleaf, senior vice president of Warfield Companies, the developers of Warfield at Historic Sykesville said. “An increase in jobs requires housing. If you’re going to expand the commercial base you have to address the housing problem.”

Dave Bowersox of Westminster is a longtime county resident.

“I can tell you if I we’re going to come back here now to start where I started 40-some years ago I probably couldn’t afford to move back here,” he said. “There aren’t the apartments and the condos in this community or in the municipalities for those people who dearly want to remain here or to move back to.”

Tyler Farris of Elm Street Development lobbied for more construction.

“Increasing new development and construction will address a lot of existing concerns that have been brought up today,” Farris said. “The first being, it adds much-needed housing to a supply-constrained market. Which is not news to anybody. That’s across the nation.

“More production lowers the cost to purchase a new home by increasing efficiencies in housing supplies,” he said. “If there are more opportunities then that levels the market, [and] the consumer gets a lower price point.”

The next step for commissioners is the formation of a work group to dig into the findings and offer detailed recommendations.

Have a news tip? Contact Sherry Greenfield at sgreenfield@baltsun.com, 240-315-7029 and @sherrygreenfie9 on X.