Study examines federally assisted affordable housing located in close proximity to public transportation in 8 cities
Preserving affordable housing near transit means more than simply saving a building—it means preserving opportunities for low-income families and seniors to access jobs and services. Next to housing, transportation is the second highest household cost for most Americans. Affordable housing located near transit allows families and seniors to live an affordable lifestyle and access employment, education, retail, and community opportunities.
Reconnecting America and the National Housing Trust identified federally assisted affordable housing located in close proximity to existing or proposed public transportation in 8 cities: Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, New York City, Portland,St. Louis, and Seattle. We found that more than 100,000 federally assisted housing units sheltering more than 300,000 individuals in these cities are located in transit rich neighborhoods. Approximately 65,500 of these units- or 63 percent of total units near transit- are covered by federal rental assistance contracts expiring before the end of 2012.
Preserving Opportunities: Saving Affordable Housing Near Transit
Over the past decade, it has become increasingly clear that the presence of transit can increase property values and result in valuable development opportunities. In this era of constrained transit funding and widespread demand for new and expanded transit systems, policy makers, transit planners and elected officials are increasingly interested in harnessing a portion of the value that transit confers to surrounding properties to fund transit infrastructure or related improvements in station areas. This idea, known as “value capture,” is much discussed in planning, transit, and local government circles. However, confusion abounds. Where does the value come from? What is the best way to measure it? And, most importantly, what is the best way to capture this value?
New research recently completed for the Transit Cooperative Research Program provides the ammunition to build TODs that take the benefits of transit into account. The study completed by PB PlaceMaking, Dr Robert Cervero, The Urban Land Institute and the Center for Transit Oriented Development looked at how automobile use of residential TODs compared to conventional development.
“Station Area Planning: How To Make Great Transit-Oriented Places” is the second in a series of “TOD 202” guidebooks to promote best practices in transit-oriented development.
This is the first in our TOD 202 series of guidebooks to promote best practices in transit-oriented development. Following publication of “Why Transit-Oriented Development and Why Now?” our TOD 101 guidebook, we realized there is a need for more in-depth analysis and discussion for TOD practitioners. This 202 manual is intended to help with simplifying the complex decisions that surround planning for TOD projects and station areas by providing details about the scales of development likely to occur in different places, as well as station area planning principles and TOD plan checklists.
The Center for TOD has updated its market demand estimate for the number of households likely to be looking to rent or buy housing near transit, from 14.6 million households by 2025 to 15.2 million households by 2030. These numbers are more than double the number of households who live near transit today. Meeting this demand would necessitate building 2,000 housing units near every station in the U.S. The earlier demand estimate was released in our landmark TOD market study ³Hidden in Plain Sight: Capturing the Demand for Housing Near Transit² in 2004. The numbers were updated for 2030 in order to be consistent with the time horizon of many regional transportation and land use planning efforts underway, as well as to account for the construction of new fixed-guideway systems.
This manual is intended to serve as a companion to MTC’s Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Policy and for Priority Development Areas under the Focusing Our Vision (FOCUS) program to assist jurisdictions with decisionmaking as they complete planning efforts around Bay Area transit hubs and corridors.
These case studies, funded through the support of the Surdna Foundation, present transit-oriented development (TOD) examples from diverse, low-income neighborhoods around transit, all built within the last 10 years. The goal of this survey is to provide examples that can help spur development around Philadelphia’s underutilized transit resources in similar types of neighborhoods. To that end, the examples in these case studies all overcame barriers to implementation using innovative, but replicable approaches. These examples are intended to allow the Philadelphia Neighborhood Development Collaborative and others to advocate for more involvement by the public sector, test some of the same mechanisms for financing and land assembly, and provide examples of successful TOD to developers and community members.
