Jobs Close to Homes

Any further thoughts in response to Teunesha’s questions? Our next field trip will be Tuesday as guided by Ashley and Erik. We will be going by bus. Show up shortly before 10. A reminder that the Avenues for Action conference is this Saturday. It’s free with lunch provided in 355. For more information and an opportunity to register, see If you are interested in a series of smart growth self-study courses, see To do the courses you have to create an account for yourself. The topics are Housing Choice, Vibrant Complete Communities, Smart Building Design, Renew Existing Communities, Green Infrastructure,, Farmland & Green Spaces, Integrated Regional Planning, Transportation Choice, Community Involvement. ChoiceVibrant Complete Communities Smart Building DesignRenew Existing CommunitiesGreenFarmland & Green SpacesIntegrated Regional PlanningTransportation ChoiceCommunity Involvement Any comments from those who went to WDCAG?

 In the past, industries and workers used to cluster close together in order to facilitate access.  More recently, separation of land uses became the gospel – partly because of industrial pollution – and, more recently, most industrial jobs have moved offshore. Not many people walk to work anymore, though some do (see charts on the following pages).

While energy consumption (and hence GHG production in most places) in the industrial sector in developed countries has declined, along with energy consumption in housing, energy consumption (and GHG produc- tion) in per capita vehicle miles travelled (VMT) has been increasing steadily for the past 70 years. This has more than offset the other gains. Moreover, people are commuting further and congestion is slowing them down. The average auto- mobile traveller in L.A. loses almost two weeks of his or her life due to congestion, in addition to ‘normal’ travel time.

TorontoMontrealCalgaryEdmontonVancouverWinnipeg Median Commuting Distance in Cities (In Kilometres)

 Many metro regions have attempted to get a bigger transit modal share by creating hub and spoke transit systems, but this doesn’t always reflect the real commuting patterns.

 In the U.S., city cores have been growing at 1/6 th the rate of the suburbs, and city centres throughout North America are somewhat declining in importance in terms of serving as job magnets.  In Greater Vancouver, many if not most commutes are between suburbs, rather than from suburbs to downtown. Richmond has the fast growing rate of jobs of any municipality in Metro.  The commute is longer for poor families who have to find accommodations where they can afford them and often drive long distances to their jobs.  While it’s hard to find figures exclusively for transport- ation costs, they can be more than housing costs and combined can be up to 59% of a household’s budget.

 As people move out to more affordable housing, their transportation costs go up – often drama- tically – something they don’t always take into account when they make their housing decisions.  The situation is so desperate in Vancouver that the City of Vancouver designated one building in the former Olympic Village as rental exclusively for “essential service” workers – policemen and women, firemen, nurses, etc., – who otherwise can’t afford to live in the city.  In addition to the affordability issue, munici- palities are beginning to dismantle the “one use, one zone” mentality in recognition of the fact that, with changes in the economy, most so- called industrial jobs do not have the negative adjacent land use impacts that they had in the past.

 As Condon notes (p. 82), “In 2006, direct fossil fuel combustion in the transportation sector accounted for 26.3 percent of total GHG emissions in the United States. However, total life cycle emissions for the transportation sector are estimated to be 27 to 37 percent higher than direct fuel consumption…. When production, air- conditioning, vehicle maintenance, and infrastructure consequences were added… the cumulative percent of total GHG emissions in Canada…rose to an astonishing 52 percent.”  Even if we all switched to driving electric cars, the load on the Earth’s resources would still be immense.

 Condon offers 6 rules for changing the relationship of jobs and land use:  Don’t assume new jobs will smell  Discourage land-inefficient job sites (e.g. single-storey industrial ‘parks’)  Integrate jobs into streetcar arterials  Wherever possible fit jobs into existing blocks  Don’t place one’s hopes on one mega- employer  Redevelop strip commercial, when under- utilized, into a location for jobs.

 “Residential land uses consume between 70 and 85 percent of all developed North American metropolitan lands” (p. 96).  Low-density single-home districts are ecologically costly in two ways: they make people drive further and their lack of shared walls ensure that their energy consumption per unit is higher – more than twice low-rise multi-family dwellings.  House sizes have expanded drama- tically (162% from 1970 to 2005) while household sizes have shrunken. It’s not uncommon for 1 or 2 people to occupy a 3 or 4-bedroom house.

 The tower is not necessarily the most energy-efficient alternative to single- family homes. They lose heat to winds, their glass sheathing allows heat to penetrate in the summer and cold to penetrate in the winter, and their construction materials involve more embodied energy.  According to Condon, the most GHG- efficient dwellings are medium to high-density low-rise structures between 20 and 65 dwelling units acre.  The trend in Vancouver is to build more of these and more towers because of the high cost of land.

Table 1: Density for Various Building Forms Dwelling Type Gross Density Low Density Single detached on: 60’ lots 50’ lots 40’ lots 5-8 upa 5 upa 6 upa 8 upa Medium Density Small Singles on 30’ lots Semi-detached on 30’ lots Semi-detached on 27’ lots Interlots Quattroplex Uniquattros Street Townhouses Courtyard Townhouses upa 11 upa 11 upa 12 upa 14 upa 15 upa 16 upa 15 upa 18 upa High Density Stacked Townhouses Walk-up Apartments Low-rise Apartments Four to eight storey Eight + storeys 20+ upa upa upa upa upa 80+ upa Depending on the size of the development area, higher levels Table 1: Density for Various Building Forms Depending on the size of the development area, higher levels (source: CMHC)

 Zoning has been used, Condon notes, as a tool for segregating populations by income. Except in exclusive neighbourhoods like Shaughnessy, this kind of uniformity was far less common in the period before WW II.  In addition, the poor were often herded into ‘housing projects’ such as Pruitt-Igoe (St. Louis) or Regent Park (Toronto). These replaced functional neighbourhoods.

 Introducing density into existing low-density neighbourhoods – e.g. duplexes, townhouses & lane units (not fool-proof)  Converting single-family homes to multiple dwelling units (easier when there is an economic incentive – e.g. ‘mortgage helpers’)  Imposing a fixed percentage of “affordable” units – sometimes called inclusionary zoning. In Concord Pacific, they had to donate 20% of the land for housing (to be funded by senior levels of government – ha ha!). In the U.S., developers are often forced to build the units themselves.  According to Wikipedia, “[m]ore than 200 communities in the United States have some sort of inclusionary zoning provision.”

 Montgomery County, Maryland, is a pioneer in inclusionary zoning policies. It is the sixth wealthiest county in the United States; yet it has built more than 10,000 affordable units since 1974, many units next-door to market-rate housing.  All municipalities in the state of Massachusetts are subject to that state's General Laws Chapter 40B, which allows developers to bypass certain municipal zoning restrictions in those municipalities which have fewer than 10% affordable housing units. Developers taking advantage of the law must construct 20% affordable units as defined under the statute.  All municipalities in the state of New Jersey are subject to judicially imposed inclusionary zoning as a result of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Mount Laurel Decision and subsequent acts of the New Jersey state legislature.

 In the South False Creek neighbourhood where I live part-time, the City owned the land and mandated that it would be one-third upper income, one-third medium income, and one-third lower income, with the different structures intermixed, which they are.  This was supposed to be the pattern for Olympic Village/ Southeast False Creek, but it was axed by a subsequent right-wing Council.  The 252 units of social housing promised for the Olympic Village (after the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 ratio was abandoned) were axed and turned into 126 market rentals, and 126 below-market rentals, some being supplied by a new co-op.

 It’s also important to distinguish between affordable housing and social housing. The latter is purpose-built housing for people on social assistance. Both the federal and provincial governments essentially pulled out of social housing in the early 1990s, though the glare of the Olympics forced the province to create some temporary shelters and to renovate some single- room occupancy (SRO) hotels in Vancouver run by non-profit agencies.

 In 2007, Smart Growth BC published a “Review of Best Practices in Affordable Housing” (see ).  In that report, they review a number of policies, programs and strategies, including inclusionary zoning density bonusing (e.g. STIR program in Vancouver) rent control resale price restrictions secondary suite policy rental housing banks, and housing funds, etc.  In addition, they also talk about the value of co-ops, co-housing, and community land trusts.

 Other possible measures include: a speculation tax or related measures (In the case of the U.S.) disallowing tax credits on second and third homes rent vouchers disallowing conversion of rental to condo, or conversion of multi-suite single-family to single-family  Can you think of other possible measures?  As Matt Hern writes, “The market puts us in a Faustian bargain: almost any attempt to beautify, improve, develop, or embolden a community inevitably means it will price out its most vulnerable citizens and under- mine all that good work.” The irony, as he points out, is that the Sunnyside neighbourhood in Portland where City Repair has done so much good work is now longer affordable for the activists!

GENTRIFICATION OF OLDER, FUNKY NEIGHBOURHOODS

 There are a number of obstacles to achieving more affordable housing, apart from rampant real estate speculation and frenzied market conditions. These include: a reluctance to interfere with property rights lack of political will lack of senior government financial support lack of appropriate fiscal instruments at the municipal level, and NIMBYism (resistance to change in existing neighbourhoods).  In some instances, part-time or speculative homeowners are buying into neighbourhoods and leaving the houses mostly vacant and helping to erode the sense of neighbourhood.