How addressing housing issues can reduce congestion on Maryland’s roads

There’s an old saying in real estate that goes “drive ’til you qualify,” which means if you can’t afford a home in a given neighborhood, look a little further out from the city until you can find one you can afford. In Maryland, this mantra has become a way of life for many working-class people.

Maryland is the 11th most expensive state to buy a home, according to Zillow, with a median home price of $308,000. It’s substantially higher in areas next to Washington, DC: in Montgomery County, the median home price in the fall of 2019 was $465,000. Renting isn’t much cheaper: workers in Maryland would need to make at least $28 an hour to afford a two bedroom apartment.

This might sound like an affordable housing issue, but it’s also a transportation issue. Maryland has the third-longest commute in the United States—in part because of a mismatch between how people live and the available housing options. So while some officials turn to widening highways as solution for easing congestion on local roads, we can also look to mitigate housing issues as a way to decrease traffic in the region.

Why some people live far from work

In communities with lots of jobs and economic opportunities, there aren’t enough homes, which pushes home prices up and forces people to look for cheaper housing in outlying areas that lack jobs and require residents to commute long distances.

Many young adults starting out are looking for compact, affordable homes, but most available homes are large, expensive properties designed for big families and occupied by older adults. In the DC area, some 273,000 homes that have at least two more bedrooms than the number of people living there are owned by people over 50.

Generations of white- and middle-class flight to outlying areas has also created a cycle of disinvestment in older urban communities, small towns, and even some inner suburbs. These communities may have affordable homes but are in poor condition and lack access to shopping, well-funded schools, or transportation. The inadequacies harm current residents, perpetuate segregation, racial and economic inequity, and discourage new people or businesses from moving to these places.

For many Marylanders, the lack of good housing choices can force people to make painful trade-offs: sacrificing time spent with friends and loved ones for a long commute; choosing between paying rent or buying other daily needs; or leaving a familiar, established community to find a decent, affordable place to live. Increasingly, this is a problem for people of all income levels: a study recently found that a family would need an annual income of $105,000 to have a “modest yet adequate life” in the DC suburbs.

A plan to address congestion through housing

Just as giving people more transportation options can reduce road congestion, giving people more affordable housing choices that don’t require long commutes—or even driving at all—can also reduce congestion.

That’s one reason why Visualize 2045, the DC area’s long-term planning vision, recommends “Bring Jobs and Housing Closer Together” as a more effective congestion strategy than widening highways. In practice, here’s what that would look like:

Building new homes in affluent communities with lots of jobs and transit. This requires less new infrastructure than sprawl development (saving local governments money), preserves land on the suburban fringe, and increases access to the amenities that wealthy neighborhoods typically have such as shopping and well-funded schools. This includes both affluent city neighborhoods like Canton in Baltimore and inner suburban communities like Chevy Chase in Montgomery County.

Redeveloping aging shopping malls and office parks. There’s a growing demand for communities with a mix of homes, shops, and businesses, which has made some older suburban commercial centers obsolete. Meanwhile, these sites have lots of land and are often in very accessible locations, creating an opportunity to sprinkle in homes with some shops and workplaces. At Columbia Town Center in Howard County, new apartments and open spaces have replaced parking lots as part of a long-term plan to replace the mall with a downtown corridor.

Creating new neighborhoods where people can walk to things. The idea behind the “Smart Growth” movement, founded in Maryland in the 1990s, was that we can reduce driving by building new neighborhoods where residents can take care of most of their daily needs close to home. One good example is The Station at Riverdale Park in Prince George’s County, where residents can walk to get groceries, see a doctor, take their kids to school, or catch the Green Line or MARC train. You can also look at how most of Maryland’s neighborhoods were laid out before the 1950s.

Changing our zoning laws. Each of the first three recommendations are illegal in many parts of Maryland. In these communities, zoning rules forbid homes, shops, and workplaces mixing together, or require that all new homes be expensive, detached single-family homes. Loosening these restrictions would allow a greater variety of homes, like accessory apartments (a separate apartment within an existing home), duplexes, townhomes, or small apartment buildings, and allow the redevelopment of old commercial sites with a mix of homes and other uses.

Promoting anti-displacement strategies. Gentrification and displacement are a real concern in communities such as those along the Purple Line in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, and current residents and small businesses should be able to benefit from the new light-rail line when it’s finished. New housing is a crucial affordability strategy, but if we want people to stay in homes near jobs, loved ones, and social networks, it’s also important to preserve existing affordable homes through stronger tenant protections, rent stabilization, and subsidies.

While these strategies can help fight traffic congestion, it’s often easier said than done. Exclusionary zoning—or laws that forbid the construction of more affordable homes in an area—has a long legacy in Maryland, and was historically used to exclude less-affluent people and people of color from rich, white communities and the ability to build wealth through homeownership.

Today, many communities continue to use zoning to keep new residents out or control the look and feel of an area. These policies have some benefits, but also significant costs including traffic congestion from long commutes as people have to travel farther for jobs and daily needs.

We can have a state with a strong economy and thriving neighborhoods, but not by protecting the status quo. If we want to end the cycle of highway expansion and all of the deleterious effects it brings, we need to think differently about the ways we get around and the ways we build and maintain our communities.

This series offers some ideas for how we can do that, but this is only the beginning. The next step is for people to come together and start working towards these solutions.

This is the third in a series of articles, written by Dan Reed in partnership with the Maryland Sierra Club, on causes, impacts and solutions to traffic and transportation. All articles will be published on Greater Greater Washington.