More housing, less traffic. Here’s how.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — As home prices have risen, a new class of super commuters has emerged in California. Stockton, Modesto, Riverside, Santa Rosa, and San Jose are all in the nation’s top ten cities for commutes longer than 90 minutes.¹ This is due to skyrocketing house prices and restrictive zoning practices that leave housing and jobs far apart, but residents don’t have to be pushed to the fringes of metro areas. Walkable Oriented Development (WOD)—development that is concentrated within a 10 minute walk of local amenities and job centers—allows more residents to live closer to the places where they want to spend their day – whether at work, school, church, or at the local coffee shop. The American Enterprise Institute is hosting a series of conferences on how incremental density around Walkable Oriented Development areas can create affordable and economically vibrant neighborhoods throughout California.

Mixed-use communities where commercial and residential life overlap are in high demand, indicating an underserved market. The energy and convenience of walkable areas such as Midtown in Sacramento or Pacific Beach in San Diego are replicable if cities allow housing around cultural and economic amenities– where people naturally want to gather. Thirty percent of residences are already located in WODs and focusing development on these walkable areas (mapped on AEI’s new HEAT Toolkit) would aid struggling small businesses by expanding their customer base. At the same time, additional traffic would be limited by promoting walking and short commutes on everyday trips.

California’s scarce housing supply is an unsustainable status quo. The median home in California is over $800,000, pricing more and more workers out of opportunities to buy or rent.² Homelessness is on the rise, with one-sixth of the country’s homeless population residing in California.³ California has the second-highest rate of outmigration, with out-of-state moves increasing over 50% from 2019 to 2020.⁴ To address the housing crisis, more construction is desperately needed. But rather than building houses at the furthest extremes of Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, or Sacramento, incrementally increasing density around walkable communities would give families and workers more opportunities to be rooted in near the people and places that anchor their lives.

Join AEI in California September 19th-23rd to discuss how walkable oriented development and light touch density can make this possible.

Registration is open for 6 conferences to be held the week of September 19th, 2022 that will feature discussions and conversations on the most pressing housing issues facing Californians. These conferences are free and open to the public.

Visit aei.org/california-housing-conference to register

¹ New York Times, “Where Are Workers Making the Longest Commutes?”

² California Department of Finance, Finance Bulletin, August 2022.

³ HUD, “The 2021 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR) to Congress.”

⁴ IRS Migration data

Media Contact Details:

Arthur Gailes
American Enterprise Institute Housing Center

Washington, DC
aei.org/california-housing-conference
[email protected]
804-662-0874

SOURCE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH

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