Montgomery County planners detail first phase of housing discrimination study

Montgomery County planners have released the initial results of their Mapping Segregation Project, documenting evidence of past restrictive housing practices, mostly based on race, throughout the county’s southern portion, in hopes of better informing future land use policy. The research was funded in 2020 “to determine whether a persistent pattern of economic inequality and segregation exists,” since the days when such segregation was legally sanctioned, according to a planning staff report from the time. Staffers briefed the county’s Planning Board on their first phase of findings as part of the board’s meeting last Thursday.