Housing the Region's Workforce: Policy Challenges for Local Jurisdictions, Center for Regional Analysis, GMU, October 25, 2011

This week, the Center for Regional Analysis (CRA) at George Mason University released its final report on housing the Washington Metropolitan area's workforce over the next 20 years using a jobs-driven approach.   Its bottom line is that the area can expect more than one million new workers and "even the conservative estimates of housing need (in this report) reflect rates of new construction that are far greater than the pace of housing construction  recent past and are greater than the amount of housing called for by many local jurisdictions’ comprehensive plans."

In its key findings, the report concludes that

• Housing supply.  The Washington DC region needs to add 731,457 net new housing units between 2010 and 2030 if each jurisdiction provided enough housing to accommodate all of its future workers.  "If the new jobs added in the local jurisdictions have the same in-commuting rates of current jobs, the housing need is 348,282 new units. This low estimate implies that a half a million new workers will commute to their jobs from places outside the region, creating unsustainable levels of traffic congestion over the next two decades." (emphasis added)

• Housing mix.  "The housing demand forecasts suggest a need for 283,677 single-family houses (single-family detached and townhomes) and 447,780 multi-family units. Thus, over 60 percent of the new housing units needed in the region over the next two decades will be multi-family while less than 40 percent will be single-family.  The region’s current housing stock, by contrast, is 67 percent single-family and 33percent multi-family. There will need to be substantial changes in builders’ approaches to new home construction and local governments’ policies for guiding residential development in order to accommodate this needed housing growth. (emphasis added)"

•  Home ownership.   "There will be a shift in the homeownership (sic) rate for future residents of the Washington DC region. Currently, the region’s homeownership rate is 64 percent. However, only 55 percent of the new workers to the region over the next 20 years will live in owner occupied housing units, while 45 percent will rent."

• Home pricing.  "The region’s new housing must be priced so that it is affordable to new workers. . . the region will need a substantial amount of ownership and rental housing with relatively moderate prices and rents. Based on the housing need forecasts, more than two-thirds of owner-occupied units need to be priced below $400,000. More than half of new renters will need housing with rents less than $1,250 a month. Thus, in order to keep new workers living within the region, there is a need for relatively smaller and more moderately priced housing in the decades to come." 

It concludes with these policy implications:



This jobs-driven housing forecast is itself a strong voice for residentially-intensive TOD area development in Reston and other areas of the region that have strong mass transit capabilities, especially Metrorail.  It argues essentially for at least a balance of residents and employees in Reston's TOD areas--as RCA's Reston 2020 Committee has argued for months--especially including Reston Town Center.  

The dilemma this report proposes is the conflict between GMU CRA's specific forecast for development along the Dulles Corridor presented to the Reston Master Plan Task Force last year--which foresaw a greater demand for commercial than residential development in each of Reston's three TOD areas--and this new, more normative forecast.  In essence, the new GMU report argues for what housing policies in the area should be for the next 20 years versus the earlier forecast that largely was an extension of development of the way that it has been.

The question becomes do we want to build Reston as a model for a 21st century planned community, or stick with the development patterns of the past that have led to our current traffic and quality of life problems as well as the export of housing (and economic activity) out of the region?

Below is the full report.

Housing the Regions Workforce, George Mason University,  Oct 2011-GMU Final Report