I rag on density issues all the time, because this under-discussed subject leads to real human suffering: “One in five renters and one in seven homeowners in the Washington area spend more than half their income on housing, according to census figures, a proportion that housing experts consider a severe burden.”
There are a lot of things you can try to do to ameliorate a shortage of affordable housing, but particularly when you look at the metropolitan scale nothing will really work unless you build more housing units and in an already large metro area like Washington that means allowing more density. I talk a lot about the need to allow more density in the city proper, but an even bigger impact would be seen if we allowed more density in the geographically larger inner suburbs. That’s not to say people need to be “forced” to live in high-density structures, it’s to say that we need to curtail the current practice of restricting people’s ability to choose higher density lifestyles if that’s the pay way to achieve the balance between commute time, neighborhood amenities, housing costs, and living space that they prefer.
Previous in TP Yglesias
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.