Middle-class crunch

Slow-growth initiatives may slow growth, but they drive out affordable housing.

In today’s FLS, there is an excellent editorial regarding the status of affordable housing in the Fredericksburg area, revolving around Bowling Green’s search former town manager candidate Gary Elander:

Mr. Elander didn’t think the town’s salary offer was too low (those in this community who earn much less would no doubt agree); he rightly deemed the Greater Fredericksburg real-estate market out of control. When the head man of a locality’s government can’t make enough to live there, we’ve got a problem. When police and sheriff’s deputies, teachers and EMTs can’t afford to live where they work, there’s a problem. (This argument surfaced in Stafford County during last year’s debate over requiring larger building-lot sizes in rural areas.) When college-educated married professionals have to fork out $300,000 or more to move up from their starter home, there’s a problem.

One gauge of the size of the problem: Last month, the average home-sale price in Fredericksburg and the counties of Spotsylvania, Stafford, Caroline, and King George was $279,301, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc., which tracks home costs.

What’s the solution? If there were an easy one, someone already would have thought of it. Government can’t–and shouldn’t be able to–simply slam the brakes on the runaway housing train by controlling prices. But government also must make sure that “slow growth” measures don’t slow the population boom by forcing area natives to move away because they can’t afford to live here–or precluding the immigration of professional people like Mr. Elander. That can be an unfortunate side effect when rezoning is used to counter Gadarene growth. Moreover, casting developers, builders, and real-estate agents as villains is not especially useful. They’re not arbitrarily upping housing prices, but responding to market forces and their own costs.

The problem isn’t so much with slow-growth initiatives as it were, but rather with the manner of which they are being implemented to date in the area.

Slow-growth in the past meant exactly that – slow the growth. Formerly, in high growth localities, the best way to do this was to take hold of the Comprehensive Plan and squeeze the growth into one location, slow zoning requests, and specify a preference for either retirement communities or large, expensive homes on five acre lots.

The downside to this is pure economics – housing is in demand, and as the demand increases, the price goes up. Not only do we not provide the townhomes and starter homes to meet the demand, we drive up the prices of existing homes. Quickly it becomes a have/have not scenario.

We have to keep in mind several things that growth impacts on the local level – specifically school construction and transportation. Currently, the transportation grid in the region is woefully underprepared for the growth we are already experiencing. Secondly, with public school costs spiraling out of control, the impact on the taxpayer for inviting “affordable housing” soom makes the idea counter-intuitive. Quality of life suffers, and Fredericksburg begins to look more like Fairfax, only worse.

So what is the solution? One, we have to take a bite out of the cost of public education. Vouchers, better planning, less administration, and above all else a system that can function without a 13% increase per year when faced with a 5% increase in enrollment. Fixing public education makes the argument for affordable housing (children and all) more plausible, because it sucks the air out of the planning argument that retirement homes and large expensive lots – while preventing affordable housing – keeps the cost of education down. Cost is the prime issue, and it needs to be resolved now.

Second, transportation is the key (and I would argue it should be a higher priority than education at this point). The Spotsylvania BOS has the right idea by committing 10% of the tax revenue from Southpointe II towards transportation needs, and frankly it should be on the order of 100% dedicated towards transportation. Better to do it now and do it well than be forced to do it 20 years later on the order of the Fairfax County Parkway, where homes and communities were being torn apart and torn down in order to meet transportation needs.

Smart growth isn’t the problem when it comes to affordable housing. Dumb growth masquerading as smart growth is, and the sooner we can fathom and resolve the costs to local government, the easier it will be to tackle the problem of affordable housing in the Fredericksburg area.