For many months, the familiar face of Jigna Patel appeared at the Anne Arundel County Council meeting on June 2, 2025. Once again, she complained about the new opportunity for aspiring homeowners in the Nixon Workforce Housing development in Glen Burnie.
This meeting, she brought some neighbors to block new housing for our working poor.
The tired NIMBY arguments were dragged out once again.
“It is too dense” – the reality is they don’t want anything new anywhere near them. They want you to go away.
“It is well intentioned, but this is not the right place” – Well what is the right place? No matter the neighborhood, they always say it should go somewhere else.
“We need houses but there would be 171 new townhomes, that is so ridiculous. There is so much traffic we can’t handle it.” – The reality is that these same people pay pennies on the dollar in property taxes due to special kickbacks in the form of homestead exemptions that would usually be used to build out traffic capacity. And they vote against any widening of roads, traffic calming, frontage improvements, walkability through density and transit infrastructure, etc.
“These workforce housing should be where the transit is.” – Anne Arundel County does not have any public transit that is legitimately accessible basically anywhere. These people vote against increased bus capacity, bus stops, improvements to bus stops with coverings, sidewalks to get to or from a bus stop, bicycle lanes, etc.
In 2023 Arundel Community Development Services, Inc., a local non-profit, identified that there was a shortage of 12,456 affordable rental units to address the needs of moderate to low income households.
171 townhouses doesn’t even scratch the surface. We need this project to go through, and for more projects like this to get started all over Anne Arundel County.
Anne Arundel NIMBY Watch 
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