News flash: Lack of housing supply causes gentrification | How to facilitate transit oriented development

This was in my Google News feed yesterday:

Well, it's lack of supply and high demand both...

-- "Why "gentrification" is visible now... the Diffusion of Innovations Curve of Everett Rogers," 2018
-- "Yes the neighborhood will change, but it will take 10-25 years," 2020
-- "The nature of high value ("strong") residential real estate markets," 2017

Link to the article.

There's been a few good threads on the topic of moderate cost housing in cities on the pro-urb e-list.

A person from Boston pointed out something that is too often forgotten, that because geographic and political boundaries are longstanding, cities can't really "grow" and add lower cost land opportunities to the development mix, in terms of infill and redevelopment.

And that land, especially single family detached, theoretically suitable for more intensive redevelopment is poorly placed.

Another writer made the point that as housing demand increases, allowable zoning intensities should increase as well.

That's a way to effectuate policy wrt the fact that since 1930, the US population has increased by 150%.

Montgomery County Metrorail Housing Initiative.  The other day, I mentioned the Montgomery County initiative to provide tax incentives to build housing at Metrorail sites ("A tax break isn't always the "right" priming lever for desired development").  The Council voted to move ahead.

I didn't realize that the intent is to foster high density housing, as indicated in this graphic from Councilmember Riemer's twitter and facebook feeds.

In any case, upzoning at rail stations--heavy rail, light rail, and commuter rail--ought to occur as a matter of course, although as discussed in the past, the ability to actually do this is dependent on a couple factors especially distance from the core.

Stations far from the core have less potential for successful intensity.  In polycentric transit networks, stations distant from the core don't have much potential for intensive, let alone super intensive housing density.

The interesting question is whether or not allowing for much higher than normal density is enough of an inducement for developers to build and potential residents to choose to live in it.

Another issue is that the farther you live from the core, even though there may be transit stations connecting to it, the less people are connected to the core, and therefore the less demand there is for transit use and connecting to the core.

The Purple Line and DC area lessons for transit oriented development (TOD) in Montgomery County.  One of the things that surprises me about the Montgomery County Council initiative is that it doesn't extend to the County's existing MARC railroad stations and the forthcoming stations for the Purple Line light rail line.  Will it take decades for such legislation to be passed for the Purple Line, like it did for the Metrorail stations (e.g., Glenmont opened in 1998; Shady Grove in 1984).

Passenger rail. In the 2017 Purple Line series and follow ups, I suggest:

(1) there be bi-directional passenger rail service on the Brunswick line which serves Montgomery County and DC (this is in various plans but hasn't moved forward, historically the line was inbound in the morning and outbound in the evening, and the areas around the stations were railroad suburbs; demand conditions have changed significantly in the last 60 years);

(2) the proposed infill station at the White Flint redevelopment site be accelerated; and

(3) a split off line/spur along 270 (or from the White Flint area) be developed to provide service to Bethesda, potentially Georgetown, and Northern Virginia ("Maryland HOT lane study versus "corridor management" and regional scaled transportation planning," 2018.

If you could build denser at the rail stations, would that help to get the State of Maryland to actually consider such developments.  (Transit planning is "all fouled up" in Maryland at present because the Republican Governor is for the most part anti-transit, which makes sense, because his previous career was homebuilding.)

Also see:

-- "A "Transformational Projects Action Plan" for a statewide passenger railroad program in Maryland," 2019

Light rail/Purple Line.  But there is no question that there needs to be a push to develop housing at transit stations. In earlier writings about the Purple Line, spurred by a couple conferences about it, held at the University of Maryland College Park, in 2014, I wrote some about this, and this piece from 2017 synthesized and updated it:

-- "Part 6 |  Creating a transportation development authority in Montgomery and Prince George's County to effectuate placemaking, retail development, and housing programs in association with the Purple Line"

I was surprised at the conference is that they were focused on "learnings" from other light rail systems, particularly in Minneapolis and Denver, because that is the same mode as the Purple Line, and didn't take the time to codify lessons from the DC area's own Metrorail.

Although I get that the key learning was that you line up financial support before the line opens, not after--in both cities it came from foundations, but all in all it wasn't a whole lot of money, and in the context of the DC area, not nearly enough to make a difference.

In Montgomery County, development at the Long Branch and University Boulevard stations in the eastern county could be spurred by inclusion in the new legislation.

Chevy Chase too, although that would be more controversial because the land use context currently is much less dense.  But as a high demand area of the county, adding housing there would be a no brainer.

Density bonuses and implementation mechanisms are necessary to facilitate transit oriented development.  AND STATION AREA PLANS.  The biggest lesson for me is to put in place design and intensity inducements sure. But also implementation mechanisms.

Because the reality is that at the outset, demand, economics, and real estate financing conditions don't favor such intensive development.

That's why you have four story housing at the Fort Totten Metrorail Station. It's an in-city location, but in a suburban patterned land use environment. Rhode Island Station is more urban (but with land pattern problems) and it still has four story apartment buildings, built relatively recently.


I can't remember when this project was built, probably before 2008.  Since then, garden apartments a little further away have been or are being redeveloped into a much denser housing and retail development called Art Place at Fort Totten, and about half mile away is where JBG built housing with a Walmart on the ground floor (I've argued this should have been a bigger project, given its proximity to Metrorail.)  

Unlike with the West Hyattsville station, which has a station area plan, even if it's taken 15 years to start to see some response, DC didn't do a larger scale station area plan for either Greater Fort Totten or Greater Rhode Island Stations, so there are plenty of lost opportunities for not just more intense development, but the creation of a real center in a neighborhood that doesn't have one.

(Intensity is coming to the Rhode Island Station area, but it's taken decades longer because of the lack of a plan, and it comes with a lot of opposition and difficulty.)

Equity considerations/affordable housing.  These implementation mechanisms are more likely to be nonprofit, or at least to require a lot of subsidy, to be able to afford to build by leading the market.  And that sets the stage to include a lot of affordable housing in the projects.

While not included as a case study at those conferences, Phoenix might be a better example than either Denver or Minneapolis in terms of operating at a greater scale, especially in terms of lining up money in advance of the light rail's opening to fund affordable housing ("Light rail housing fund spurs 15 projects in metro Phoenix" and ""Why you don't see more vacant lots along light-rail route,"Arizona Republic).

The Phoenix program hasn't involved a lot of money, although none of the projects are particularly large.

Prince George's County.  Note that this entry has been about MoCo because of the current legislative initiative.  But all of these issues pertain to PG County too: the need to repattern land use around transit and transit stations; to add intensity; to provide ways to improve demand along at least one MARC rail line (Camden) and to add the opportunity for infill stations on or extensions from the Penn Line, etc.

For example, with an integrated rail passenger service on the Penn Line in Maryland and the Fredericksburg Line in Virginia ("A new backbone for the regional transit system: merging the MARC Penn and VRE Fredericksburg Lines"), it could be advantageous for PG County to add an infill station in Landover, etc.