Next week, Rail~Volution conference attendees will be visiting many of DC’s thriving neighborhoods – communities lively with offices, new restaurants, bars, coffee shops, farmers markets, new rental housing, and quite often, and very importantly, a public transit station. Many of these neighborhoods look drastically different than 5, 10, or 15 years ago before such investment spurred development around Metro rail stations. The change in these neighborhoods – and most notably their access to transit – has continued to motivate housing and community development organizations in DC to think… what does this mean for housing options for existing and new residents to these communities? What does this mean for other neighborhoods across the City? Across the metropolitan region? How should we respond?

Our Response.

Enterprise Community Partners and NHT Enterprise have responded by spearheading a local initiative, GreenPATH – the Green Preservation of Affordable Transit-Oriented Housing initiative. Enterprise and NHT have been collaborating on GreenPATH as a response to the neighborhood change we were seeing across the region – knowing the affordable housing options near transit for low-income families were shrinking. We also knew that certain neighborhoods, such as those east of the Anacostia River in DC, are ripe for similar investments and potential neighborhood change. East of the Anacostia river is what many refer to as the “last frontier” of a critical mass of affordable housing stock for low-income families. Much of this stock is within walking distance to Metrorail stations.

Enterprise and NHT have been actively working to raise $54 million of capital to preserve over 1,000 units within a half-mile of rail station – at rates and terms flexible for developers to acquire and hold smaller, unsubsidized properties for later rehabilitation. Other key partners have joined in to support the initiative – Metropolitian Washington Council of Governments and Reconnecting America – working together to be proactive in preserving affordable housing near existing or proposed rail station across the region.

The Time is Now.

Last week, the District Department of Transportation opened a new DC Circulator route to extend the network east of the Anacostia River. Redevelopment of the St. Elizabeth’s campus is underway, expected to bring over 14,000 new jobs to the area. As investments in transit and jobs are growing, preserving housing opportunities for a broad range of households is vital.

Learn More and dialogue on the topic.

Interested in learning more and dialoguing on this topic? Come learn about local programs at Rail~Volution on October 19th at 2pm.

By Michael Spotts

As Congress continues to debate the appropriate size and scope of the federal government, one thing is for sure – an era of fiscal austerity is beginning that will have a significant impact on regions and organizations that utilize federal funds. Tighter budgets will surely create a more competitive appropriations environment. Therefore, it is crucial that practitioners are able to justify continued funding for their work through quantifiable and robust metrics. Equitable transit-oriented development (TOD) has the benefit of advancing multiple policy objectives simultaneously: for instance, making efficient use of infrastructure, reducing the combined housing and transportation costs of low-income households, connecting people at all income levels to economic opportunity and services, reducing energy usage and environmental impacts, and increasing/stabilizing transit ridership.

Hypothesizing that these benefits are true is simply not enough. Practitioners have to provide data that explicitly demonstrate the benefits of equitable transit-oriented development to ensure that programs survive among various policy priorities. In order to meet this goal, several organizations have taken the lead in sustainability and TOD research. The Center for Neighborhood Technology’s Housing + Transportation (H + T) Affordability Index , which takes a more comprehensive look at the costs associated with housing location, is perhaps the most prominent of these efforts. Reconnecting America, Strategic Economics and the Center for Transit-Oriented Development have released a number of thorough reports and analyses of TOD-related issues. The Enterprise Green Communities initiative (which supports location-efficient, green and healthy housing) has gathered data and published reports on the utility cost savings and health benefits of green affordable housing. The National Housing Trust has examined how states are prioritizing their Low Income Housing Tax Credit allocations to promote the preservation of affordable units near transit. Finally, the Center for Housing Policy has released reports and blog posts connecting TOD data and principles to policy solutions.

The next step is for policymakers and advocates to fully utilize this information. Jurisdictions should embrace the use of new metrics such as the H + T Index in prioritizing and evaluating community development projects. Government and private funders should work together to synthesize this wealth of information and create common criteria to make reporting requirements more efficient and less confusing. Finally, advocates should use this research and analysis to craft a compelling narrative that affordable, healthy housing with access to transit services is an integral part of the social safety net (along with entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare) for low- and moderate-income households. 

When people are looking to rent an apartment or buy a home, housing affordability is often one of the primary considerations. This is particularly true of low- and moderate-income households, for which an inexpensive place to live can free up income for other necessities such as food, child care and health services. However, housing costs often do not paint a complete picture. Housing costs can be lower in areas without close proximity to employment centers and services. Yet research by the Center for Housing Policy (CHP) has shown that every dollar saved in housing costs is associated with a 77 cent increase in transportation costs. As the maps below show, when both housing and transportation costs are taken into account, the opportunities for true affordability among less wealthy households diminish. 

Public transit investments can help alleviate some of the financial pressures for low- and moderate income households. Transit can be a crucial connection to needed jobs and services. Research has also shown that public transit riders tend to have lower incomes, with nearly 66 percent of riders earning less than $50,000 per year. Transit also has numerous community-level benefits. New transit investments can help spur the redevelopment of struggling neighborhoods. Rising property values can bolster municipal finances and help homeowners build assets.

However, transit expansions and other major public investment projects can also have unintended consequences. The escalation of property values can lead to rent and home price increases that can worsen the cost burden of low- and moderate-income households and potentially lead to displacement. Therefore, it is important to coordinate housing and transportation planning and investment. Creating incentives and financing mechanisms for affordable housing and community development near transit can both improve a transit project’s financial viability (by stabilizing ridership) and ensure that the benefits of the investment are equitably distributed.

Investments in housing, transportation, infrastructure and economic development need to be coordinated as early in the planning process as is possible. Affordable housing preservation and development costs can be significantly reduced if property can be purchased prior to the onset of price escalations. One way to promote early, coordinated planning would be to incorporate affordable housing and community development factors into the rating criteria for transit programs. Last year, Enterprise joined the National Housing Conference and Habitat for Humanity in calling for such criteria to be added to the Federal Transit Administration’s New Starts program (read the full comment letter). Federal initiatives, such as the Partnership for Sustainable Communities also support the coordinated planning efforts that can advance this goal.

Local communities can also promote transit-oriented community development in a number of ways. Jurisdictions can adopt inclusionary zoning policies or set up tax increment financing districts (for a more detailed discussion of local policies, see CHP Executive Director Jeffrey Lubell’s blog post on the subject). Governments, nonprofits and community development financial institutions (CDFIs) can also work to provide financing for TOD projects. As an example, Enterprise and other local entities set up the Denver TOD Fund to support the expansion of the city’s rail system. We are also a partner in the Bay Area Transit-Oriented Affordable Housing Fund in Northern California, and we are working with local leaders to provide financing in other cities. Implementing these strategies can be difficult and require a significant amount of financial, political and human capital. However, with strong leadership communities can employ a variety of tools to ensure that transit investments have an equitable impact on all people. 

Michael Spotts (biography) is a Policy Analyst for Enterprise Community Partners. At Enterprise he conducts research and analysis of laws and regulations related to affordable housing and community development policies, with a primary focus on sustainable community development and transit-oriented development (TOD).