
You can’t judge housing affordability without knowing transportation costs - oftenwrong
http://cityobservatory.org/transportation_housing_affordability/
======
robertnealan
Several years ago I asked my mom why she lived so far from where she worked
(Vallejo, CA to San Ramon, CA), and she claimed they were saving money on
cheaper rent. Five minutes of napkin paper math later I pointed her and her
partner were spending roughly $700/month commuting in gas, bridge toll, and
basic wear+tear on their vehicles (based on ~$0.45/mile).

It seems like most people don't account for vehicle costs when accounting for
cost of living. Why I'm not positive, though it seems to just be the general
abstractness of the cost spread out over time, and the assumption in America
that you're going to drive everywhere anyway so it doesn't matter.

Even worse we see this with numerous Uber/Lyft/delivery "contractors" who are
putting endless miles on their personal vehicles without accounting for the
inevitable cost of replacing them.

~~~
bluGill
Why $.45/mile? Is that real? I keep track of all my expenses, so a few years
ago I was able to calculate my real lifetime costs at $.15/mile,
asymptotically approaching $.10. Of course when I travel for work the IRS says
I charge $.50/mile, which is pure profit.

The IRS numbers assume a newish car (more expensive) that gets poor fuel
mileage. It is probably correct for the average car, but there is no reason
you need to be average - unless you want to.

~~~
testis321
In my country (EU, so gas is a bit more expensive) the government calculates*
transport costs at 0.37eur/km. So $0.45/mi would be in the right ballpark.

You have to account everything, not just fuel, from car depreciation,
servicing (oil changes,...), normal wear (brakes, tires,...), occasional
replacements (batteries, wipers, ...), etc. If you drive 20.000kms per year,
and a yearly service (oil, filters,...) costs 200eur, just that adds aditional
0.01eur/km. Two sets of tires (winter/summer) are ~2 _300eur + 8 changes (8_
~40eur) adds an additional (almost) ~1k eur in four years, 1 more cent.
Insurance, registration.. 3, 4 cents. etc.

*that's the untaxed amount you get reimbursed for if you use your own car for a business trip.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
There are two different calculations here. One is, what's the total cost of
vehicle ownership amortized per mile? That's what the government and most
popular types of accounting use.

The other is, given I'm going to own a car already, what's the difference
between a shorter commute and a longer one? That's going to be a lower number
per mile. A big chunk of the vehicle's depreciation is a result of years
rather than miles, insurance doesn't generally track how many miles you drive
and charge extra if you drive more, the registration and tax isn't any
different etc.

The second one is how a lot of people end up all the way out in the suburbs.
They can't afford to live in the part of the city that makes it viable to not
have a car at all, but once you have a car as a sunk cost, another ten or
twenty (or thirty or ...) miles in exchange for saving hundreds of thousands
of dollars on housing starts to look like a good deal.

Though the huge factor people commonly forget is their own time. If your time
is worth $25/hour then a half hour each way on your commute is $6500/year. And
that's assuming you're only further away from work and not also further away
from whatever you do on weekends.

~~~
daurnimator
> A big chunk of the vehicle's depreciation is a result of years rather than
> miles

Ehhhh, I'd say that it's not that skewed towards age of the vechile beyond
common correlations:

    
    
      - usually more years = more miles
      - cars < 5 years are usually in warranty and fetch a premium
    

> insurance doesn't generally track how many miles you drive and charge extra
> if you drive more

Mine does: in 5000km increments. (Australia)

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Ehhhh, I'd say that it's not that skewed towards age of the vechile beyond
> common correlations

But the warranty period is a huge amount of value, and there are others, e.g.
newer cars are safer and have whatever other improvements so older cars aren't
worth as much regardless of milage. Then many repairs are age related rather
than mileage related, e.g. a car exposed to the elements will rust or
experience day/night thermal stress even if you don't drive it.

> Mine does: in 5000km increments. (Australia)

Let me rephrase this. The insurance cost does not scale linearly with miles
driven.

------
thorwasdfasdf
There's a huge connection between housing and transportation, one affects the
other in profound ways.

NIMBY Environmentalist, please take note: For example, in the bay area, high
housing prices push people to the outer boundaries of the bay for housing,
like Tracy, Stockton and beyond. Imagine the impact on the environment as most
people are commuting 100+ miles per day more than if they were simply allowed
to live where they work.

~~~
davidw
> NIMBY Environmentalist

This is a real thing. Exhibit A is the San Francisco Sierra Club.

[https://www.thebaycitybeacon.com/politics/the-sierra-club-
fi...](https://www.thebaycitybeacon.com/politics/the-sierra-club-fights-to-
save-a-parking-garage/article_93ff9084-3be7-11e7-a3a8-17f11f24db6e.html)

~~~
bparsons
Usually the opposition to density is just cloaked in environmentalism.

When it comes down to it, these are individuals who don't want outsiders
moving their community, or new units driving down the explosive growth in
property values they have experienced.

As usual, it is just greedy people wanting more.

~~~
tsss
Or maybe they just don't want more density. You talk like there's only upsides
to high-density cities but the people who are living there right now might not
be amused about more people, more cramped spaces, more noise and pollution.
You can call it greed but it is, as a matter of fact, a downgrade in quality
of life for most of the residents.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Or maybe they just don't want more density.

Which is a fine thing to want -- so go live somewhere that occurs naturally
without regulatory restrictions. There are plenty of areas in the US, or even
within California, with low and medium density that require no artificial
restrictions to keep them that way.

~~~
shados
The thing is somewhere that occurs naturally could change tomorrow. I live in
a quiet dead end by a small park with nothing interesting near by. Or well,
nothing USED to be interesting near by. A small family shop around the corner
sold their lot and a giant apartment building via special permit is replacing
it, and with it a bunch of other conversions around happened, all in the span
of a few MONTHS. And now it's a permanent construction zone and heavy traffic.
No one would have guessed that was going to happen. The area was a freagin
slum with no one wanting to touch it with a stick until then. Until we (and
people like us) decided to make it nicer. Often with our own money.

Some people definitely care about their property value and generally use their
house as an investment and a retirement plan. A heck of a lot of people just
want to be able to keep sleeping at night. Short of buying a lot in the middle
of nowhere, it's ALWAYS going to be a gamble, and its pretty natural to expect
it not too change too much if there's no indication it will. I'll give you
that if you buy a single family in SF today and think it's going to stay that
way, you're pretty silly. But it was well within my lifetime/adulthood where
it wasn't that crazy an idea.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> The thing is somewhere that occurs naturally could change tomorrow.

So could a million other things. The local government could become corrupt and
raise taxes while cutting services to divert money to cronies, leaving you in
the middle of a violent slum with a high unemployment rate. Your employer
could move its offices thirty miles further from where you live. Climate
change could put your whole town underwater.

The solution to things changing in a way you don't like is to vote with your
feet. And at least in this case you're effectively being compensated for it,
because an area that is being developed will cause your land to be worth more.
Some developer will pay you a lot of money to put up more apartments or condos
where you are, and then you have all that money to go somewhere else -- where
the land will generally be less expensive, yielding you a nice profit to
compensate you for your trouble.

You can live in any kind of place you want. You can't expect that place to
never change.

And predicting this isn't really _that_ hard. I can predict with reasonable
certainty that twenty years from now Des Moines will still not have the
population density of New York City, and a person making the same prediction
twenty years ago would also have been right. San Francisco is the exception,
not the rule.

~~~
shados
> The solution to things changing in a way you don't like is to vote with your
> feet

Or you know, just vote in municipal election or go to cityhall hearings, since
that's how cities work, and that's exactly how people do it. It's not super
weird for people living in a city to try and dictate how the city they live in
work.

Last time I moved cities I ended up having to move 3 times in a row because of
unexpected things. Yes, some people can do that without breaking a sweat, but
it sure got exhausting. If I lived to 1000, I wouldn't really care, but life
is short and there's only so many times you can do life altering changes. If
moving was that simple, there wouldn't be so much criticism over people
getting displayed by raising housing costs, after all.

> And predicting this isn't really that hard. I can predict with reasonable
> certainty that twenty years from now Des Moines will still not have the
> population density of New York City

Except a NIMBY thinks about "their backyard" for a reason: Who cares about the
city's population density. The problem is the 10 story building popping up
across the super tiny quiet street because a special permit was issued to
override zoning.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> Or you know, just vote in municipal election or go to cityhall hearings,
> since that's how cities work, and that's exactly how people do it. It's not
> super weird for people living in a city to try and dictate how the city they
> live in work.

The problem obviously being that there are people who work in the city and
would like to live there but can't afford to and thereby don't get a vote even
though they have a stake. So then you get efforts to overrule the cities at
the state level and so on, and the outcome of that process is whoever can
capture 50%+1 of the votes regardless of your preference as an individual.
Whereas if you move to somewhere your preferences are likely to remain
satisfied you don't have to worry about any of that.

> Last time I moved cities I ended up having to move 3 times in a row because
> of unexpected things.

Moving is work. But so is fighting everybody just so you don't have to.

And the people who want to be able to live in the city _don 't have that
option_. Moving into the city _is_ what they want, but the housing needed for
all of them to do that doesn't exist, so their only option is to cause it to.

> Except a NIMBY thinks about "their backyard" for a reason: Who cares about
> the city's population density. The problem is the 10 story building popping
> up across the super tiny quiet street because a special permit was issued to
> override zoning.

Not a lot of ten story apartment buildings go up in the middle of a hundred
square miles of farmland.

~~~
shados
> Not a lot of ten story apartment buildings go up in the middle of a hundred
> square miles of farmland.

You already said "The problem obviously being that there are people who work
in the city and would like to live there". So people who are already there and
already have that should give it up so others can have it. Got it.

> even though they have a stake

A stake for sure, but compared to people who not only work there, but sleep
there, go to school there, pay taxes there, shaped it, took part in the
decisions that made it what it is? A very minuscule stake. I don't live in the
city I work in. Short of them shutting down the roads and the subway, those
who do can do whatever they want. Fortunately they seem to like those roads
and subway, so there's no big push (that I've seen) to do so.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> You already said "The problem obviously being that there are people who work
> in the city and would like to live there". So people who are already there
> and already have that should give it up so others can have it. Got it.

The people who want to live there want to live _in a city_ , i.e. a place with
ten story apartment buildings. The people who are already there can continue
to live there all they like, but if you don't _want_ to live in a city with
all that entails then why are you? There are suburbs all over the place if
that's what you want.

> A stake for sure, but compared to people who not only work there, but sleep
> there, go to school there, pay taxes there, shaped it, took part in the
> decisions that made it what it is? A very minuscule stake.

Explicitly because you're imposing rules that prohibit them from having those
things, even though both they and the owners of the property that could be
used to allow them to do that would like to allow it.

> I don't live in the city I work in. Short of them shutting down the roads
> and the subway, those who do can do whatever they want. Fortunately they
> seem to like those roads and subway, so there's no big push (that I've seen)
> to do so.

There is a clause in the US Constitution that allows the federal government to
regulate interstate commerce. It's used as an excuse for them to regulate
everything under the sun, but its _purpose_ is to deal with conflicts between
regions. If Texas has a bunch of oil companies and wants to enact
protectionist rules to impede the rise of electric cars, there is a national
interest in preventing them from doing that.

It's no different between cities and towns. Everybody wants protectionist
policies that benefit themselves at the expense of everybody else, but those
policies are net negative for society and the people you're screwing over have
every right to try to stop you.

~~~
shados
> There are suburbs all over the place if that's what you want.

Not SF obviously, but most places where these debates pop up ARE suburbs.
Thats the whole problem. People spend forever finding a place that suits their
need, and then others come in trying to transform them into something that
suits theirs instead. Which is fine I guess, but I'd be hard pressed to say
one side has the moral high ground.

~~~
davidw
100 years ago they were farmland or forest. Things change. We can't expect our
cities to stop evolving.

------
dsfyu404ed
The fact that this article does not break down the various transportation
costs sets off massive red flags.

The $3k/yr number mentioned for the cost of transportation via car in Houston
is on the same order as an MBTA rail pass in the Boston area. Driving
everywhere in Houston results in a hell of a lot higher quality of life than
riding public transit everywhere in Boston.

Yes of course transit is not free but that's true whether regardless of your
mode of transit. The premise is solid. The analysis is lacking.

~~~
oftenwrong
An MBTA local bus and subway pass is $84.50 per month

$84.50 * 12 months = $1014 per year

As someone living in metro Boston, that is a large difference in cost from my
perspective - approximately equivalent to 2 months of rent.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
If you live outside of the subway system and need to get places (particularly
in/out of the city) within a reasonable time-frame you're likely going to need
a commuter rail pass. That jacks up the price substantially.

I did the whole "live in Boston and just use public transit thing" for awhile.
Then I moved to one of those cities that MA likes to pretend doesn't exist and
my transportation costs stayed about flat. If I had made heavy use of
Uber/Lyft they probably would have decreased. My friend commutes in from
Worcester and rides the train because of the tolls and the fact that his work
subsidizes the rail pass. In a sprawling city with free/cheap parking there
would be no economic reason to do anything but drive.

~~~
Steltek
When people say "public transit", they don't mean the periphery of a commuter
rail system. They mean the core bus network and usually the subway. You're
comparing the worst case of meaningful public transit to a city only built for
cars. My hypothesis, if you lived in Somerville, Dorchester, or at most,
Quincy, the numbers would look different.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Sure, if you specifically craft your living situation to not involve commuter
rail (and don't replace it with Uber/Lyft) you can save money. But you'll
spend the money on rent.

~~~
hsitz
> But you'll spend the money on rent.

Bingo! That's exactly what the linked article is about. How much extra are you
paying in rent? How much are you saving on transportation? What are total
costs of [rent + transportation] in both cases? How much time is wasted on
transportation when you're paying lower rent? These are questions that need to
be asked.

Why would you not want to "craft" your living situation to give you the
optimal setup? No, you can't have everything, but a "crafted" lifestyle that
avoids need for transportation may be preferred by many, and may in addition
in some cases be cheaper _and_ provide higher quality of life. Maybe not,
maybe not for everyone; but those are questions that need to be asked, not
simply have, "What are housing rental/purchase costs?" be taken as deciding
question of what places have higher cost of "housing".

------
EZ-E
Housing affordability & transportation costs relationship is the cornerstone
that triggered the yellow jacket movement in France. Take most vulnerable
families that live away from employment centers (cities) because they can't
afford a house there, you have dependability to driving cars (no public
transport). The government steps in and tries to tax fuel more for ecology -
which pleases richer urban voters but squeezes people who bought a house 20
years ago back when fuel, insurance, parking wasn't as expensive. Their house
are the only one that - by the way - are the only ones that didn't gain value.

The ever increasing "metropolisation" as we call it, is scary. More and more,
you better be able to afford living in a big city or suffer the negative
consequences

~~~
albertgoeswoof
> squeezes people who bought a house 20 years ago back when fuel, insurance,
> parking wasn't as expensive. Their house are the only one that - by the way
> - are the only ones that didn't gain value.

Are those the same people that tell me to move out of the city into a bigger
place and commute in? They seem pretty smug about their choice, “you paid how
much for your tiny little house? You could buy a mansion for that here”

Well this is why those people are wrong.

~~~
EZ-E
Some people do not realize they could get bit pretty hard by buying a house
far away, that is indeed cheap and larger - but what happens when fuel gets
even more expensive and governments issue many taxes and restrictions to
discourage car usage ? (without offering realistic public transport options).
Not to mention the usually poorer infrastructure/hospitals/schools

Note that it depends on the locality though, some places manage to find the
sweet spot - not too far and still not that expensive. In some cities this
doesn't exist.

~~~
anovikov
Is the fuel really a concern there? I mean, fuel is such a tiny small part of
the expenses overall in Europe. Almost invisibly small. France consumes 162K
barrels of gasoline a day, or 9.4 billion liters at average price of 1.57 EUR.
That's 1.2% of the value of household consumption, and by far not all of it is
gasoline consumption by consumers. So we are speaking of <1% of household
expenses. How is this squeeze?

~~~
benj111
This is what I'm trying to work out.

Here in the UK the AA come out every time theres a budget, asking for lower
fuel duty for "hard pressed motorists".

The reality is fuel isn't that expensive, as evidenced by the fact that large
4x4s are getting increasingly popular, and people are happy to drive the half
mile to the local shop to buy a pint of milk.

Edit: Plus EVs are a thing now, if fuel prices really were that bad.

------
atemerev
Am I the only person here to actually like cars and enjoy driving? Being free
from public transport timetables and the ability to go anywhere on a whim are
so precious. As an introvert, I see my car as my private space.

~~~
crazygringo
For _most_ people, there's no such thing as liking or disliking "driving".

There's how you feel about "driving and finding parking in rush hour in
midtown Manhattan" and how you feel about "driving down beautiful back country
roads with no traffic".

Without discussing the context of _where and when_ , giving opinions on
driving is almost meaningless. I mean, here in Manhattan during the day, the
subway comes often enough that you don't need a timetable, and you can get
most places on a whim a hell of a lot faster than you would in your car.

~~~
manfredo
There are some people for whom driving really is something they like. It's not
driving per-se but I personally enjoy motorcycling in pretty much any context
whether its commuting in heavy traffic (granted, here in California that does
mean I get to lane-split through lots of it) or riding for leisure.
Maintaining the machine is also an aspect of it, for some people their car or
bike fulfills a niche sort of analogous to a pet or a garden. Not being able
to have an automobile (car or motorcycle) if frequently a deciding factor in
where people choose to live.

------
rayiner
A lot of this is hand waving. As the article admits, it doesn’t adjust for
lost time, or household size and composition. Regardless, it assumes a causal
relationship between housing costs and transportation costs (I.e. that people
with lower housing costs spend more on transportation because their houses are
further away).

That’s not a sound assumption. The typical pattern is younger people living in
the city and moving to the suburbs as they get older and have kids. In the
latter case, transportation costs go up because the amount of transportation
that needs to be done goes way up. My wife and I went from not having a car in
Chicago to having two cars in the Annapolis suburbs. One car is necessary
because we now have to drive to the train station to get to DC. That fits in
with the article’s premise that increased transportation costs offset lower
housing costs somewhat. The other, however, is necessary because we have two
kids who need to go to a ton of different places. Even in Chicago, it’s
unlikely that your work, your wife’s work, your kids’ school, and your kids’
extracurricular activities are all going to be near transit.

Also, the article assumes that transportation erases the housing cost
difference without accounting for the fact that people might purchase more
transportation because housing costs are so much cheaper, not just because
they have to to cope with sprawl. We moved from a 1,400 square foot 3BR
downtown to a 2,800 square foot 4BR in the burbs. Our mortgage is half of what
our rent used to be. Had we continued to pay city rents, we may have continued
to drive my 10 year old fully paid off car. Instead we bought two newer cars,
not because they were necessary for the commute, but because we had the extra
cash.

The article also leaves out the third rail of urbanism: schools. The folks who
live in our neighborhood in Annapolis could not afford to buy a house, even a
much smaller one, in DC with a public school as good as the one we have here.
The folks I know trying to square that circle (living downtown in one of the
handful of good school districts in the city) are paying three times as much
as we did for housing. (And, as a result, live in gentrified neighborhoods
with little economic or even racial diversity.)

~~~
oftenwrong
>The typical pattern is younger people living in the city and moving to the
suburbs as they get older and have kids.

How long has this been the typical pattern? Auto-oriented suburbs are an
experiment two generations in the making. Before that development, there was a
sharper urban-rural divide. I would not be surprised to see the US largely
swing back to that arrangement within the next 60 years.

~~~
adjkant
To expand on this anecdotally, I know of millennials who moved to the suburbs
anticipating that suburban shift and have found themselves sorely mistaken
about most of their friends patterns. I'd love to see stats on urban->suburban
movement by age over the past 20-30 years.

~~~
rayiner
Data suggests that millennials have been putting off moving to the suburbs,
consistent with their putting off home buying and having kids, but that trend
has already peaked as we get further away from the recession:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-04-03/millen...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-04-03/millennials-
moving-to-suburbs-will-change-economic-development).

The lack of good schools and affordable houses in cities seems to be the deal
killer. In my own experience, I don’t know any middle class people trying to
raise kids in the city. Out of my friends’ circle, the folks trying to stick
through the city thing are all high income ($200k+ household). My wife and I
stuck it out downtown for a while—until our daughter was five. But the costs
add up shockingly fast. For example, for the first four years, you can’t send
your kids to public school even if you want to. A daycare near my office in DC
is $2,400 per month for infants. Near my house in the Annapolis suburbs, it’s
$1,500 at the high end. Most of the good public schools are in Northwest,
where $900,000 is table stakes for a house (and where you need a car anyway
because there is no metro).

~~~
adjkant
Yeah, you need money to raise a kid in a city, that's for sure - no argument
there. That said, I'd say millennial are having fewer kids (feel comfortable
on that claim without researching stats but of course they are welcome) so
that makes cities more attractive to the current 25-40 age range than their
predecessors.

------
ineedasername
The math in the article is a bit off when it claims the "sprawl tax" makes up
the difference in higher travel costs when located in sprawling lower cost
housing markets. They estimate increased travel cost at $3k/year, $250/month

They take Houston as an example, which is on the opposite end of the housing
cost/sprawl spectrum from, say, San Francisco, but the "sprawl tax" math
doesn't work here. Given average apartment costs and 30yr mortgages at about
4%:

    
    
      Houston Avg House Cost:about $300k or $1400/month
      SF Avg House Cost: about $1.3 million or $6100/month
      Difference: about $54,000/year
    

Apartments aren't much better:

    
    
      Houston Avg Apt: about $1100/month or $13k/year
      SF Avg Apt: about $3500/month or $42,000/year
      Difference: $2400/month or $29,000/year
    

The sprawl tax doesn't begin to cover these differences. The numbers above are
similar for NYC. For Seattle it's less drastic, but still well in excess of
$3k/year. Boston is on par with Seattle. On the other hand, Chicago is semi-
sprawlish with it's suburbs, and prices are significantly cheaper. About the
only place I could find where this "sprawl tax" concept applies successfully
after looking at a few randomly picked cities is Hoboken, NJ. A small city
twice as densely populated as SF, very popular through proximity NYC and a
mini tech hub in its own right. There, buying a house is still not going to
even out the sprawl tax, but an apartment will just about do it. (The average
cost of apartments vs. houses there is oddly divergent from other cities I
looked at.)

~~~
komali2
Maybe try a city like Taipei or Tokyo?

I think unfortunately there's too much noise from factors like weird
regulations and anti-housing hyper activists in cities like San Francisco to
get a good comparison.

~~~
moate
But isn't that part of the problem? You can't make these sort of blanket "one
size fits all" statements because every local is a new mix of problems. The
types of solutions and regulatory changes that solve the bay area would be
useless in Tokyo and laughable in New Jersey.

------
chiefalchemist
" If you have to drive everywhere, and drive further for every trip, what you
save in rent or mortgage payments, can be more than eaten up in car payments,
gasoline purchases, and time wasted traveling."

Well, that's assuming you own / lease a vehicle.

Instead, if you're using public transportation then sprawl translates into
time. Longer distances translate into more stops, and perhaps even a transfer,
or two. That time adds up.

If you're lucky you drive to the train station. But best I can tell, if you're
using buses to get around locally, you're paying dearly in time. In fact, a
couple days ago I saw a report on the local news that SEPTA (PHL, PA) is
seeing bus rides / riders declined. They attributes this it Uber and Lyft.
Apparently, the market is figuring out - faster than SEPTA - that time really
is money.

------
esotericn
It's strange to me that this wouldn't be considered intuitively obvious.

Is it specifically car costs that people find hard to grok?

In London you could live in Zone 1, walking distance from your work, and pay 0
GBP for essential transport, or you could live in Zone 6 and pay ~250GBP a
month, or you could live in a small town or village somewhere with a rail
station and pay 250-500 depending on distance.

You can't really avoid knowing it unless you just don't care what anything
costs.

A few years back I moved from a flat around the corner from work to one quite
far out. The cost savings were minimal with transport accounted for; negative
if I valued my time. The main thing was being in a more suburban location,
less concrete etc.

------
SilasX
Yes! This is why I have suggested using my metric DIPHLoW:

Discretionary Income Per Hour Lost to work:

Discretionary income: Income minus taxes and minimal housing costs.

Hour lost to work: Time at work plus time commuting

That more completely captures the tradeoffs that policymakers face.

They can't just sigh and expect people to move further out, be cause, yes, it
increases discretionary income, but also increases time lost to work, so isn't
necessarily an improvement.

Higher taxes _might_ be a good idea if they can be used to scale up
transportation capacity in proportion to the hit to DI.

And policies that reduce pre-tax income _might_ be a good idea if the housing
savings cancel it out.

------
microcolonel
When you ask for public transit, you don't necessarily get it either.

It seems that when demand for public transit is high, politicians often put
forward light, elevated, and subsurface rail boondoggle projects instead of
just buying some buses and organizing routes, the incremental, somewhat
temporary improvements necessary to move toward better transit connectivity.

------
ghettoimp
Why single out transportation? One could imagine a cheap house in a small town
with no jobs, high taxes, expensive utilities, pricey shopping centers, in a
flood plain, in a country with an exceptionally broken healthcare system.
Transportation could be the least of your problems.

------
bayareanative
Also property taxes and costs of living: food, _transportation_ and other
necessities.

------
dazmax
One of the easiest ways in which you can live longer, is by simply managing
your current time better. For example, try living near everything that you
might need, in an area with no pollution. Hard to find for a good price!

------
COREi7
"They spend 30 percent of their income on housing and 20 percent of their
income on transportation. The second household lives in a city and owns one
car. Their house is more expensive than the suburban one, so they spend 40
percent of their income on housing, and just 10 percent on transportation. Is
it really accurate to describe the second (city) household as any more “cost-
burdened” than its suburban peer?"

The answer is yes. Comparaing housing costs to transportation costs is not
accurate. Housing costs are fixed based on neighborhood so most residents are
forced to either pay the price or move. While transportation costs can always
be budgeted lowered by many methods. EX: using fuel efficient vehicles, car
pooling, sharing vehicles, etc.

~~~
ouid
You can buy cheaper houses in neighborhods, or rent, or have roommates. Many
things can be done to mitigate the cost of housing, just like with
transportation.

~~~
COREi7
> You can buy cheaper houses in neighborhods, or rent, or have roommates. Many
> things can be done to mitigate the cost of housing, just like with
> transportation.

Housing prices both renting/buying are usually fixed based on similar houses
in the area. You arent going to see a $2500 a month house next to a $600 a
month house. So the idea that you can just buy drastically cheaper houses in
the same neighborhood is not true. Roommates are an option for singles. But
not feasible for families

~~~
astura
>You arent going to see a $2500 a month house next to a $600 a month house

Maybe not in a modern cookie cutter subdivision, but in older neighborhoods,
definitely. My street has a lot of variety of size and occupancy. We have big
single family houses, smaller single family houses, duplexes, triplexes, and a
house with a mother-in-law apartment.

>Roommates are an option for singles. But not feasible for families

Roommates can work for families with the right architecture, I've seen it work
before, personally. Of course, if you're completely closed off to the whole
idea just on principal, it won't work.

------
AtomicOrbital
keep in mind the retail cost of fuel is massively subsidized ... after you
factor in global military budget spent subjugating oil rich countries, say
nothing about the hit western global big oil would take if those same
countries nationalized their own oil ... everytime people step on that pedal
they must be reminded of the implications

------
kadendogthing
Not to mention all the tax dollars suburban/rural homes take from city centers
to subsidize their "cheap" housing.

------
rdiddly
4:30 PM PST - hug of death?

------
rconti
Yeah, it makes me very uncomfortable when people say "housing is unaffordable
in ${region} for anyone making less than ${salary}.

On the one hand, I appreciate that they're trying to put numbers on a problem
we all feel in our gut. You can't hand-wave it away by saying "well, things
change".

But, at the same time, things DO change. At a time when many goods and
services are at an all-time low in terms of costs, why WOULDN'T housing costs
go up? On the one hand, costs will be affected by constrained or increased
supply. On the other hand, there's the demand side. If I can afford to cheaply
feed and transport and clothe myself, why would I not choose to allocate a
greater share of my income towards housing closer to work, or with more space,
or in a more desirable neighborhood? The choices we all freely make with how
to allocate our income necessarily drives affordability for others.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
This seems like a reasonable hypothesis.

And easily tested.

Is it true that the other costs of living have gone down in real terms. If it
is, then we also need to know if people are buying those cheaper products and
services.

We also need to know which groups of people are affected by which price-
changes-over-time, in real terms.

This seems like information the statistics bureaus are likely to collect,
definitely recall seeing this sort of data published by the Australian Bureau
of Statistics, and I vaguely recall the costs of living have gone up but I’ve
never attempted to dissect the data.

I think the most important idea from the parent comment here is whether it’s
possible to live on rice, lentils, onions, and potatoes, plus heating and
cooking energy, at a lower rate now than the recent past, and if so why are we
choosing not to.

~~~
derekp7
Cars are more expensive compared to many people's salaries, as evidenced by
car loans getting extended to 7 years. However they are more fuel efficient,
last longer, and have lower maintenance costs (oil change at 10,000 instead of
3000 miles, for example).

For food it really depends on what you get. Meat seems to be higher, but I'm
always amazed at how cheap bananas and potatoes are (and rice). Paying per
minute for phone calls is a thing of the past too.

However a modern lifestyle also comes with more "almost necessary" expenses,
such as home internet, cable ($150 - $200 a month), plus cell phone ($160 per
month for two lines, to get unlimited calls and data). But electric usage is
lower due to higher efficiency appliances and lighting.

~~~
rconti
The 7 year loans _could_ just mean people are _choosing_ to buy more expensive
cars, or have less money left over after other costs. I believe average
selling prices are tracking inflation, but mandated safety and efficiency
drives costs up. (I'm not saying this is a bad thing -- it just IS).

I agree with you on the "almost necessary" expenses. While nobody "needs" a
$1000 smartphone, of course, it's hardly reasonable to not expect someone to
complain about the cost of living unless they're adjusting their rabbit ears
and using a tin cup and string. In particular, for many lower-income people,
their (say) $400 smartphone might be their primary computing device

In other words, it's complicated!

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>The 7 year loans could just mean people are choosing to buy more expensive
cars,

That's exactly what it is. Cars are lasting longer so more of the market is
shifting to various types of used (e.g. CPO Avalon is bought by people who
would have formerly bought a new Echo) and there's a bunch of secondary
mechanisms and financial incentive shenanigans that further this.

