Jim Scott's Richmond Report

Housing and Transportation: A mismatch?

Too rarely do we discuss the issues together. Dr. Stephen Fuller of George Mason University has frequently pointed out the region’s mismatch of housing prices and transportation capacity. As median housing prices escalate, and transportation funding stagnates, the gap between job availability and housing affordability widens. In other words, adequate housing for many working poor and middle-income families is only available at substantial distances from jobs. The alternative is for families, particularly immigrant families, to reduce the gap by crowding into housing fairly close to their job sites.

One solution is to build more roads or mass transit. The other is to build more housing at cheaper prices. Both provoke the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) response.

One solution is largely public; the other is principally implemented and funded by the private sector. Transportation requires substantial public funding to construct. Housing does not.

With the completion of the biennial budget, Virginia continues a period of transportation funding shortages. Additional state funding is probably two years away—after the next gubernatorial election in 2005. Congressional action on funding appears deadlocked until after November, 2004, at the earliest.

New Approaches

One approach to the transportation crisis is to encourage more private funding. Most localities have encouraged private funding at varying levels through zoning proffers or “impact” fees. In short, they rely on private resources to provide roads, parking or alternative job sites (“telecommuting”). Some are now beginning to re-think housing strategies and transportation funding.

Some examples:

• Fairfax County objects to VDOT’s planned excessive widening of the Beltway and endorses the concept of a private party building, and substantially funding, a scaled down widening project;
• Fairfax County aggressively pursues a “stretch” goal of 20% telecommuting by County employees;
• Fairfax County, led by Chairman Connolly, makes the private preservation of affordable housing a priority and establishes measurable goals. Preservation has two benefits: it stops the loss of relatively inexpensive resources and frequently avoids the NIMBY zealots.
• Falls Church Chamber of Commerce makes addressing the shortage of affordable housing a priority.
• the Virginia Foundation for Housing Preservation is a 501(c) (3) organization established to assist in providing “gap” funding for preserving existing lower cost housing
• Local planning and land use strategies are increasingly calling for replacing each lost affordable dwelling unit with another. Units preserved, or provided anew, reduce the pressure on the transportation system. Units lost add to transportation woes.