B7: Housing + Transportation Affordability Index in San Antonio

Tuesday, September 16, 2008 1:30 PM – 3:00 PM; Room 102 B

A New Tool for Disclosing the True Costs of Location

Scott Bernstein, Founder and President, Center for Neighborhood Technology

A standard definition of housing affordability is that a home is affordable is the housing costs (or contract rent + utilities) are 30 percent or less of household income. But research shows that the cost of transportation is largely a function of how convenient a location is, and therefore measures of affordability should include the cost of transportation. A study by the Center for Neighborhood Technology for the Brookings Institution demonstrated how to construct a new kind of index, and then for the Center for Housing Policy, CNT demonstrated how to apply it to compare housing to transportation costs, both regionally and at the much smaller census block group scale. This index is now available to generate housing and transportation cost comparisons for 52 metropolitan regions, and also provides access to the underlying data utilized, such as vehicle ownership, vehicle miles traveled per household per year, and gasoline costs. A recent update brings the transportation costs current through June 30 2008. The web address is http://htaindex.cnt.org, and the San Antonio metropolitan area is currently being added. This presentation will (1) explain the nature of what’s increasingly been dubbed the Drive ‘til You Qualify housing market, and why the apparently affordable home located far from a city center actually ends up costing the occupant more; (2) how to use the new index; and (3) how to help people and communities in San Antonio make location and investment choices that can reduce the cost of living instead of increasing it.

 

References

 

• “Calculating the True Cost of Housing,” HUD User, Office of Policy Development and Research, USHUD, Volume 5, Number 7, July/August 2008 at http://www.huduser.org/periodicals/Researchworks/julyaug_08/RW_vol5num7t3.html#t3

 

• Center for Neighborhood Technology & Center for Transit-Oriented Development, The Affordability Index: A New Tools for Measuring the True Costs of a Housing Choice; Brookings Institution, 2006 at www.brookings.edu/reports/2006/01_affordability_index.aspx

 

• Scott Bernstein; “The New Transit Town: Great Places and Great Nodes That Work for Everyone,” concluding chapter, The New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit Oriented Development, Hank Dittmar and Gloria Ohland (eds). Island Press 2004

 

• Center for Transit-Oriented Development, Preserving and Promoting Diverse Transit-Oriented Neighborhoods, November 2006 at http://www.cnt.org/repository/diverseTOD_SummaryReport.pdf

 

• C. Makarewicz, P. Haas, A. Benedict, S. Bernstein, “Estimating Transportation Costs for Households by Characteristics of the Neighborhood & Household,” Transportation Research Record, forthcoming, Fall 2008, Transportation Research Board, National Academy of Sciences

 

 

Scott Bernstein is President of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, an urban sustainability innovations laboratory which develops resources and systems to promote healthy, sustainable communities by helping local leaders understand and use their hidden assets; and publisher (1978-1998) of The Neighborhood Works, winner of the Peter Lisagor Award for Public Service Journalism. He studied at Northwestern University, taught at UCLA and was a founding Board member at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Center. President Clinton appointed him to the President’s Council for Sustainable Development, where he co-chaired its task forces on Metropolitan Sustainable Communities and on Cross-Cutting Climate Strategies and to other Federal advisory panels on global warming, development strategy, and science policy. He recently helped write a climate change strategy for the 1^st 100 days of the next Administration, and proposed a sustainable development strategy for the City of San Antonio.

 

Transportation Policy: He co-founded the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership in 1990, a national coalition which shifted federal policy toward greater local control, and currently serves as Chairman. The resulting ISTEA legislation was reauthorized twice. Since 1991, the portion of public dollars spent on enhancing existing systems jumped from 55 to 80 percent, mass transit investments rose to record levels, and a firm basis was laid for promoting urban and suburban reinvestment over decentralization and sprawl.

 

Location Efficiency and Affordable Housing: He led the development of the Location Efficient Mortgage® , which increases housing affordability by recognizing the value of convenient living, and the new H + T Affordability Index^sm, to help working families recognize the full value of reducing transportation expenditures. This index shows that working families now typically pay more for transportation than for housing, published by the Center for Housing Policy of the National Housing Conference in A Heavy Load. A new tool, https:/htaindex.cnt.org, provides this index, along with maps and data access for 52 metro areas. In the 1980s, CNT helped lead a movement to prevent housing abandonment through better information access, more responsible ownership, reduced energy use, and better tax policies—the tax policies included the creation of low income housing tax credits, passed by Congress in 1986`and have anchored affordable housing finance ever since. CNT’s approach to reducing energy use was awarded the grand prize in the Enterprise Foundation’s National Cost-Cutting Competition in 1990.

 

Transit-Oriented Development: He co-founded the Center for Transit Oriented Development, which created the nation’s first National TOD Database, covering all 4,000 existing and developing TOD sites in the U.S. These resources provide new performance benchmarks for TOD. He co-authored The New Transit Town: Best Practices in Transit-Oriented Development (Island Press 2005) and Street Smart: Streetcars &Cities in the 21^st Century, a winner of the Congress for a New Urbanism’s Charter Award (May 2007).

                                    

Energy Efficiency: CNT has managed large-scale programs in partnership with energy utilities and foundations to deliver cost-effective energy services for multi-family, commercial, not-for-profit and industrial facilities. CNT managed a large-scale neighborhood-based energy cooperative to deliver targeted services in Chicago’s Latino Pilsen community, garnering 30 percent participation there. In partnership with the Preservation Compact, CNT Energy manages a one-stop efficiency service to preserve affordable housing in Cook County.

 

Awards: Bernstein and CNT earned awards from the American Renew America; the Secretary of Energy; the League of Women Voters; American Institute of Architects; USEPA; and Mayor Daley of Chicago, among others. CNT’s office earned the coveted “Platinum” rating from the US Green Building Council, and its Energy Smart Pricing Plan received the Chicago Sun Times Innovation Award. Scott can be reached at scott@cnt.org.