Two years ago, teachers, government workers and people with disabilities crammed the Anne Arundel County Council chambers to support a measure that would incentivize the production of more affordably priced homes.

Soaring rent and home costs in the county — and statewide — had made the cost of living increasingly unaffordable, bill supporters said, forcing many to live far from where they worked. The county subsequently passed a bill with bipartisan support that aimed to make it easier for developers to build single-family homes and townhomes for the county’s “workforce,” or people making slightly less than the $122,000 median income.

Now, a follow-up bill, scheduled to be heard Monday, seeks to limit such development.

Bill sponsor Nathan Volke, a Pasadena Republican who supported last year’s workforce housing policy, said this latest iteration would change where workforce units could be built to minimize potential traffic and congestion in neighborhoods.

“Anywhere you do workforce housing, it would make sense to make sure the infrastructure can handle it,” Volke said.

Last year’s bill permits a “density bonus” for workforce housing units — allowing a developer to build more than what the zoning code dictates. Volke’s bill changes it to allow workforce housing density bonuses only on “higher classification roads,” such as freeways and principal arteries.

But some have challenged Volke’s motivations. They accuse him of heeding the feedback of a relatively small group of “NIMBYs,” shorthand for people arguing “not in my backyard,” at the expense of the rest of the county.

A group of neighbors in Glen Burnie, opposed to plans to develop townhouses on a former bus depot, have led the charge to revise the workforce housing bill.

Jigna Patel, Anita Patel and Kyle Nembhard don’t see themselves as NIMBYs. Rather, they said, they welcome the prospect of adding more housing, and more affordable housing, where they live — just not at the scale proposed near their homes.

It’s a tension playing out across Maryland as state and local leaders seek to address a housing inventory shortfall that’s driven up prices for more consumers and chipped away at the regional economy.

Marylanders overwhelmingly want more housing, polling data consistently shows, especially at more affordable price points, and they want more government intervention to make it possible. But housing policies designed to make it simpler and easier often attract loud opposition, too, making the passage of such laws politically fraught.

Such nuance has kneecapped similar proposals in neighboring jurisdictions. On Thursday, in Baltimore, a zoning revision that would eliminate mandatory parking minimums drew such fierce pushback from one former council member that the hearing went into a brief recess.

Anne Arundel County has some of the state’s most expensive home costs, according to data from the National Association of Realtors. And, in 2024, it commanded the second-highest gross median rent — or rent plus utility costs — in the Baltimore area, at more than $2,100, trailing only Howard County, a Banner analysis of new U.S. Census data found.

The median home price in Anne Arundel was about $513,000 in the first three months of the year, the Realtors association data showed, meaning half of all homes sold for more and half for less. Only Montgomery and Howard counties had higher median sales prices in the state.

County Councilwoman Allison Pickard, a Glen Burnie Democrat, said rolling back the workforce housing incentive could alter the county’s future irrevocably. She called on her council colleagues to reject Volke’s measure.

“We are denying an entire generation homeownership and the American dream,” said Pickard, an Anne Arundel County executive hopeful, about the bill’s potential. “We just need the political courage to change the narrative around this issue.”

The community that inspired Volke’s attempt to limit the workforce housing bill sits in a forested, suburban stretch of Glen Burnie, where developers planned to build 171 townhomes on a 25-acre property that once housed a school bus company, with about 43 to be marketed at reduced prices.

Nembhard and the Patels worry that an influx of cars would make their roadways even more difficult to navigate — some households own several vehicles, and nighttime street parking sometimes clogs the roads, they said — and they have pushed back against a planned walking path that would connect the neighborhood to the nearby Sun Valley Park, which they have characterized as a potential throughway to a “high-crime” area.

“It doesn’t take current constituents into consideration,” said Anita Patel, whose family has lived in the same Glen Burnie home since 1992.

Her sister, Jigna, said buyers of workforce housing deserve thoughtfully planned, minimally congested communities as much as market-rate buyers.

She called it “reasonable and common sense” to amend the bill.

The split over Volke’s proposal comes weeks after Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed a four-pronged executive order related to housing production. It required state agencies to prioritize building more housing on state-owned land and asked localities to work with the state to develop housing production targets.

Under County Executive Steuart Pittman, Anne Arundel County has made some efforts to ease its worsening affordability problem, including establishing an affordable-housing trust fund and strengthening fair-housing protections. But no Maryland jurisdiction has produced enough to bring costs down, researchers and policy analysts say.

Pittman, in a statement, called Volke’s bill “a step backwards.”

So did Maryland housing secretary Jake Day in written testimony submitted to the County Council, saying the 2024 measure struck a balance between adding more density without overwhelming infrastructure.

The bill also has drawn opposition from Anne Arundel County Connecting Together — a coalition of faith-based groups — and the Anne Arundel County Association of Realtors.

Milton Horn, president of Dreamcraft Homes Inc., an affiliate of which is spearheading the Glen Burnie project, said the workforce housing bill’s incentives offset the price of offering more affordable homes. Concerns about added traffic impacts are understandable, he said, but unfounded.

He noted that each townhome will have a garage, which he hoped would ease neighbors’ concerns about road and parking congestion. And he had wanted neighbors to view the proposed walking path as an amenity, not a threat.

Scaling back the workforce housing bill in response to his project goes too far, Horn added, and would result in fewer front-line workers and service workers being able to live in Anne Arundel County.

“And I don’t think that’s right,” Horn said.

Monday’s bill hearing kicks off at 7 p.m.