While a large portion of the region’s jobs are located in or near the District of Columbia, high housing costs force many people who work in or close to the nation’s capital to live further away from job centers so that they can afford housing. Although people may think they are saving money by living in more affordable housing further away from work, that is not necessarily the case.
According to a new publication released today by the Urban Land Institute Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing – in partnership with the Center for Housing Policy and the Center for Neighborhood Technology – called Beltway Burden: The Combined Cost of Housing and Transportation in the Greater Washington, DC, Metropolitan Area, housing located far from transit and employment centers places a heavy financial strain on working families in the Washington, DC metropolitan region.
The report documents the challenges faced by working families in the area who are forced to “drive ‘till they qualify” for housing – that is, working families forced to incur higher transportation costs that eventually erode their housing cost savings. According to the report, an estimated 60 percent of households have either high housing cost burdens, high transportation cost burdens or both.
For more information, please read the Press Release and visit ULI’s Web site.