John Mataya is a Regional Planner at COG and serves as Coordinator for the Region Forward Coalition
This is part two of a series on the future of the region’s housing. Part one features Lisa Sturtevant & Stephen Fuller from GMU’s Center for Regional Analysis.
Recently the Center for Regional Analysis (CRA) at George Mason University published research quantifying the demand for housing in metropolitan Washington. The results suggest the region will need to create 640,299 new housing units to accommodate about one million net new jobs forecasted between 2010 and 2030. (CRA analyzed the entire DC-VA-MD-WV Metropolitan Area; however, this jobs estimate is for the smaller geography of the COG region.) These numbers represent a call to action. The locations where new housing is developed could either support regional sustainability and prosperity goals outlined in Region Forward, or contribute to stagnant job growth and require costly road investments to import labor from beyond the regional footprint.
Fortunately, Region Forward gives us guidance on how to begin thinking about managing this growth. The targets state that the region should accommodate 50% of new households in Regional Activity Centers and that in the future, all Activity Centers should have transit. COG is still working with the Region Forward Coalition to redefine the Regional Activity Centers to better align them with existing and new transit investments. This redefinition will help the region invest strategically in these places and identify future multi-modal transportation investments that connect Centers. In the meantime, it’s helpful to take a look at the difference between the amount of the region’s planned housing growth around transit and the 640,299 new units CRA states will be needed.
COG staff analyzed the regional Round 8.0 forecasts within a half-mile of Metrorail stations, including two new transit investments that are regionally significant and are funded, the Silver Line and the Purple Line. In a future post we will take a closer look at housing planned around new transit investments, but is important to note forecasts and conditions on the ground are changing as jurisdictions adopt plans that create livable communities around these transit investments. The most notable example is the Tyson’s Corner Comprehensive Plan which will add a large amount of new housing around the Silver Line.
The regional Round 8.0 forecasts reflect underlying zoning capacity for housing and master plans approved by local jurisdictions throughout the region as of 2009. By 2030 there are only 147,732 new households or housing units forecasted within a half mile of transit investments. This is a big gap and suggests some significant changes are needed if we expect to accommodate most of the region’s housing around transit investments. If the region is to accommodate 50% of CRA’s 640,299 units (including single family and multifamily units) around transit, we should be planning for around 320,150 units around the region’s existing and planned transit investments.
Revising our plans to accommodate at least 50% of this growth around transit would be consistent with the region’s vision while also serving to keep households and their spending within our regional footprint. Focusing this growth around the transit stations would also support the region’s existing investments in transit and reduce housing and transportation costs for households.
It is misleading to use existing zoning in making forecasts of this type because the regulatory processes for sprawl and transit-oriented development are fundamentally different.
Sprawl is often built of right. Existing zoning usually requires sprawl, even in areas where the actual intention of the local authorities is transit oriented development. Sprawl zoning is often put in place in advance of market demand.
For transit-oriented infill, master plans and rezonings almost invariably come only after market demand. The ultimate zoning is the outcome of political bargaining between pro- and anti-development forces. Sprawl zoning and sprawl master plans stay in place until the pro-development forces come to the table.
An example of this process at work is the Woodmont Triangle Sector Plan amendment in Bethesda a few years ago. Even though everyone involved recognized that the zoning of the apartments along Battery Lane is obsolete and incorrect for this transit-oriented area, the planning board staff refused to include this area in the rezoning on the grounds that the area is not yet ripe for development.