Moving Beyond 'Drive until you Qualify'

In a joint effort by the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) and Washington, D.C.-based the Brookings Institute, an interactive mapping web tool -- the Housing + Transportation Affordability Index -- was developed to measure the true affordability of housing by applying transportation costs.

The tool provides housing and transportation costs as a percentage of income on a neighborhood-level basis for 52 metropolitan areas using 2000 U.S. Census data and analysis of household transportation costs.

Urban planners, policy-makers, and transportation and housing advocates measure housing affordability as 30 percent or less of household income. However, housing affordability is not always what it seems.

As Scott Bernstein, president for CNT explained during a presentation today at the Brookings Institute, the old adage of "drive until you qualify" is really no longer an appropriate measure of housing affordability. As gas prices increase along with suburban sprawl, much of the population is paying as much for transportation as they are housing.

The new tool demonstrates that household size and income are less important these days in determining affordability than do neighborhood characteristics, such as good and frequent transit service, proximity to jobs, and amenities within walking distance in determining how much a family will have to spend on transportation annually.Although as Bernstein said as an anecodte, someone may live on top of a tranist center, but if it only runs once a day, it isn't going to do much good.

According to research presented in Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, a new book from ULI, shows a concerted push for compact development would produce a decline of 12 to 18 percent in total metropolitan vehicle mile traveled by 2050. The best ways to reduce vehicle travel is compact development: building places in which people can get from one place to another without driving -- mixed-use developments in pedestrian-friendly settings.

"Unfortunately, many federal, regional, state and local transportation and development policies promote increased dependence on driving," said Keith Bartholomew of the University of Utah and one of the researchers for Growing Cooler. "Rather than minimizing time in the car, many policies have the effect of requiring Americans to drive, rather than allowing them to walk or bike."

Bernstein supported Bartholomew’s view by pointing out that children are no longer educated to budget only 3 percent of costs toward transportation but are now ingrained to go into debt by age 16 buy purchasing a vehicle.