A respected expert on the Washington regional economy considers the precipitous loss of affordable housing even more worrisome than our third-worst-in-the-nation traffic congestion. When people who can’t afford to live near their jobs are forced to commute miles to work every day, roads become even more severely clogged than they otherwise would be.
George Mason economist Stephen Fuller recently chided elected public officials for ignoring what he says is the most significant challenge facing the national capital region. “This is a supply problem. Local governments don’t want to have houses built,” Fuller told squirming politicians from 21 local jurisdictions gathered at George Washington University last week to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Metropolitan Council of Governments. “Many jurisdictions love the jobs but don’t want the people. It’s inconsistent!”
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Exacerbated by years of double-digit tax increases, high housing costs have already forced thousands of people who work here to commute from far-off neighborhoods in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Most first-time home buyers have been completely priced out of the regional housing market. Fuller was blunt: If COG members don’t make major changes now and add 55,000 affordable units to the regional housing stock each year, these trends and attendant problems will only worsen.
High-paying jobs are the essential foundation of our thriving regional economy, which will need even more workers in the future to continue to grow. But affordable homes and efficient transportation options are just as important, and we’re not building nearly enough reasonably priced homes or new roads to accommodate the 4.5 million new workers expected to come here in the decades ahead.
Instead of investing in needed new highway projects after decades of neglect, local governments used their real estate tax windfall to snap up parcels of buildable land for open space and to continue funneling tax dollars into failing public schools. Unnecessarily restrictive zoning in places like Montgomery County’s “Agricultural Preserve” don’t help. And all those highly publicized affordable housing programs don’t even come close to replacing the modest houses and apartments destroyed to make way for commercial buildings and outsized McMansions — a trend encouraged by local officials because such homes generate more tax revenue for them to spend.
When enough people decide it’s not worth the hassle to move to D.C., Fuller warns, “we won’t be able to support the infrastructure we borrowed money to build.” Some companies have already decided to relocate to other cities with cheaper housing, better roads and lower taxes. If nothing else, that should shake COG members out of their self-satisfied lethargy.
