Montgomery County Planning Commission Executive Director Scott France stands in front of the Ambler Theater on Tuesday, Sept. 30 at 108 E. Butler Ave. in Ambler. (Rachel Ravina – MediaNews Group)
Housing remains a top priority for Montgomery County planning officials preparing for some 100,000 new residents over the next 25 years.
The county has dealt with joint crises related to housing and homelessness in recent years. Those crafting development guidelines for the next few decades emphasized the rising cost of living as they work to balance affordability and prospective growth.
“When I think about where we’re going to be in 25 years … it’s got to be a place that is livable, that’s affordable, that is sustainable, and the kind of place where we want all of our kids to grow up in, and we’re working towards that,” said Montgomery County Commissioners’ Chairman Neil Makhija.
Hosted by the Montgomery County Planning Commission, speakers updated attendees of a Sept. 30 public forum at the Ambler Theater on progress related to Montco 2050: A Comprehensive Plan for a Changing World, which is slated for adoption in early 2026.
The county plan is updated every decade, according to Montgomery County Planning Commission Executive Director Scott France, who said the outline covers a myriad of topics, including community facilities, economic development, health, housing, land use, preservation, resident needs, resources, and transportation.
“It helps with all issues, from growth areas where development is best suited, where preservation needs to take place, where we’re trying to maintain landscapes,” France told MediaNews Group.
The Sept. 30 forum shed light on the latest launch of the plan’s draft goals and visions, which France categorized as the “meat and potatoes of the document.” Work on the comprehensive plan’s latest iteration began in 2022 with a post-COVID-19 pandemic theme, France noted in his remarks, stressing the public health crisis “held a seismic impact on our lives at the time” and “hastened some trends that we’ll be continuing to address over the next decade.”
Those “larger issues” ranged from health to climate change and severe weather to equity.
“Growth will happen, and that’s honestly in my opinion a good thing. The opposite of growth is stagnation and decline,” France said. “So we have to figure out how to manage that growth, where it makes the most sense.”
Public input paramount
Stressing that public input is paramount to crafting the comprehensive plan, the planning commission assembled a 40-member advisory committee around 1.5 years ago to work on brainstorming, researching and conducting outreach. People can also share their opinions and submit feedback at engage.montgomerycountypa.gov.
Officials discovered diverse answers when gathering responses from area residents with respect to housing, as Montgomery County Planning Manager Anne Leavitt-Gruberger observed.
While some discouraged the government from “interfering with the process of buying and selling and finding any home,” others stressed “that housing is really expensive and that it’s hard to find an affordable place to live,” Leavitt-Gruberger said.
“People also want opportunities for home ownership, that opportunity to build wealth, and to use a home as a way to do it,” Leavitt-Gruberger said. “People also wanted to see more housing for those with modest incomes.”
“I was surprised to see how many people across the county were acknowledging how huge an issue that was,” said HealthSpark Foundation President and CEO Emma Hertz.
Hertz, who co-chairs the board, runs the Colmar-based fund that’s distributed $18.4 million in 1,044 grants to 226 organizations since 2022. With social services being in Hertz’s wheelhouse, affordable housing is crucial.
“I think the one clear piece of the plan is the need for more attainable housing across the county,” Hertz told MediaNews Group. “Recognizing that the market is not creating those corrections for us, but really we need to be investing in more attainable housing for people who are of middle income, who are service workers, or police officers, or teachers, child care workers.”
Costs outpacing inflation
This comes as the cost of living continues to climb locally. The median sale price of a home in Montgomery County was listed at $471,500 as of July 31, according to Zillow, and the average rent was $2,095 per month as of August 2025.
“Housing purchase prices and rental costs are outpacing inflation and household incomes. More than a quarter of county households are cost-burdened. So that means that they’re paying more than 30 percent of their household income towards their housing costs,” Leavitt-Gruberger said. “That could be by choice, but for a lot of people, it’s not. Nearly 50 percent of rental households in the county are cost-burdened as well.”
Hertz agreed, fearing the county may be heading for a tipping point if preparations aren’t made.
“I think that what we’re seeing is … we have a certain subset of folks who are trying to move out of a place that they’re in right now, and can’t find something that’s affordable for them,” Hertz said. “So they’re stuck in something and then others just can’t break into the market at all.”
“I think that this is really going to be a generational challenge where, in 10 and 20 years from now, we see just a loss in equity in families, and that’s really going to impact our economy. It’s going to impact future savings for people, so I think we need to address it now in order to (prevent) these issues from happening in the future.”
Homelessness addressed
Homelessness was another top concern for planners. Findings from the Point-in-Time Count in January are not yet available; however, officials estimate that around 500 people were counted.
Officials have long attributed the area’s uptick in homelessness to several factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, damage to buildings from Hurricane Ida in 2021, the increasing cost of living, and a lack of affordable housing stock.
“When housing prices go up, the people who struggle the most to afford those homes suffer greatly as a result,” Leavitt-Gruberger said, as the county’s gone “without a permanent homeless shelter” following the Coordinated Homeless Outreach Center’s closure in June 2022.
Montgomery County officials have begun addressing the homelessness situation in recent months by taking a regional approach, executing leases for rooms at a Pottstown hotel and an office building in Lansdale that will soon become a 20-bed supportive short-term housing facility, as well as receiving a variance from Norristown zoning board members in May for a planned facility in Norristown. Both the Lansdale and Norristown sites will be run by the Philadelphia-based Resources for Human Development.
Leavitt-Gruberger stressed “the county will have emergency seasonal shelters as well as supportive housing, both temporary and permanent,” incorporated into the comprehensive plan.
When tackling affordability to address mounting housing and homelessness issues, France said it’s about delving into existing data and zoning possibilities for consideration.
Calling for varying types of housing and accessibility to nearby downtowns, parks and public transportation was significant.
“We look at housing supply, we look at different types of housing and how we zone,” France said, “and there’s … lots of incremental steps we can take to improve that scenario, even if it isn’t 100 percent fixed.”
Not as simple as yes or no
Weighing development and land preservation was also something for planners to think about, as overall desirability prompts ongoing development of land throughout much of the region, including Montgomery County. Most recently, the closure of the beloved Freddy Hill Farms — a dairy farm, ice cream parlor, market, and entertainment complex featuring a driving range and miniature golf course that opened in the early 1970s— exposing a large tract of land has brought proposals.
Towamencin Township fielded dozens of comments urging preservation of at least some of the site, but two development plans brought forth by Pinnacle Reality Development Company proposed building 141 housing units in three neighborhoods, or 321 units, including a mixture of townhouses and single-family detached homes. Towamencin Township supervisors struck down a zoning request in a 4-1 vote last month.
“I think it’s never quite as simple as yes or no on growth, and the answers vary immensely, but depending on place and circumstance,” France said.
Leavitt-Gruberger outlined the county’s vision as planners look to generate a formula for better housing.
“The planning commission will create model ordinances, and provide technical assistance to municipalities seeking zoning for different types of housing … accessory dwelling units for communities that want to promote adaptive reuse and other strategies to promote affordability.”
“I will provide guidance on creating zoning codes that promote adaptive use of underutilized areas, whether it is an institutional area, industrial building or maybe an office building that people are no longer using for working, and we will continue to guide the construction and operation of supportive housing facilities,” she continued.
While a lofty goal, Hertz underscored that it’s an attainable one, “especially if we look at it as a decade, or multiple-decade investment,” requiring stakeholders to work together to accomplish in the years to come.
“The county is able to set a broad vision, but a lot of the work that needs to get done is actually going to be done by municipalities, and boroughs, and residents, and businesses, and so we need to work hand and glove together to achieve these goals. I think an event like this today allows us to continue to engage the community, and folks at the local level, to actually put those goals into action,” Hertz said.
