For Many, Transport Costs More than Housing

The Washington Post reports today that the large group of individuals choosing to live farther and farther from our nation's central cities is paying more for transportation than for housing. The explanation for this phenomenon is obvious: people move to distant suburbs like Virginia's Loudoun County to pay less money for more house, but the end consequence is that they must spend a larger percentage of their incomes on transportation, since nothing is in walking distance of their homes and they must commute long distances to reach their workplaces.

The fascinating report (in PDF) by the non-profit National Housing Conference details differences between spending on housing and transportation between individuals of different incomes and living in different parts of metropolitan areas. Perhaps most interestingly, it shows that households with incomes between $20,000 and $35,000 spend between 30-35% of their incomes on housing no matter where in the metropolitan area they're located, but that those households located in central cities spend 22% of their incomes on transportation while those located away from any employment center spend 37%.

The report urges lawmakers and planners to consider housing and transportation as two parts of one equation. In order to reduce commuting costs, neighborhoods should be constructed densely and close to mass transit lines in order to allow for the maximum number of trips to be made without automobiles.

These conclusions are easy to support, but harder to implement. Poor and middle class individuals are increasingly choosing to move to distant suburbs simply because quality housing in cities, especially in densely-packed areas, is too expensive. For much of the population, spending more time in the car seems like a fair tradeoff for a bigger house and a yard for the kid. But, as we all know, increasing suburbanization is a detriment to the environment, increases traffic, and forces reliance on the automobile. So government policy must provide cheaper housing within cities, or at least in suburban centers along transit lines, if the problem of transport expense is to be dealt with.

We as a country face a secondary problem: our population continues to expand, and we are not building mass transit to accommodate that growth. For example, the fact that the nation's heavily sprawled-out capital relies on two small and infrequently-run commuter rail services (MARC and Virginia Railway Express) and not a developed system such as New York's, Paris', or London's means that the center city is unable to expand as a job center and that commuters from much of the surrounding landscape are provided few public transport options.

If we're serious about committing the United States to a future in which there is reasonably-priced housing and cheap transportation, governments - local, state, and federal - must invest in affordable housing and mass transit.