Living and Driving in the City

Dear City-Dwellers:

Megan McCardle follows up on her earlier discussion of the DC housing market, http://tinyurl.com/8w54x5v, “Is DC Real Estate Headed Up or Down?” “Those of you who live in more normal housing markets may feel a bit faint at the thought of paying $700,000 for a 2,000 square foot town home, however recently renovated with the finest that Home Depot has to offer. You are strongly encouraged to sit down, and perhaps take a small restorative brandy. Feeling better? All right, back to the main question: is it a bubble? Or are we headed for, erm, a permanently high plateau? Prospective homebuyers want to know.” She entertains three theories: 1) Democrats like to live in cities, so the Obama administration attracted more people who wanted to live in downtown DC. She dismisses this theory, since DC was gentrifying at a rapid pace during the Bush administration years. 2) “Government spending is rocketing away, boosting salaries in the area.” McCardle relies on her mother’s real estate agent for the evidence that dual-income couples earning $200,000 to $400,000 a year are buying out singles and couples making just $120,000 to $150,000 a year. 3) “DC is now in a virtuous cycle: falling crime and a decades-long trend towards moving back into city centers have boosted property values, which in turn boosts city resources and causes crime to fall and more amenities to be provided that attract more affluent residents.” McCardle rejects this theory because it proves too much; other cities undergoing a “virtuous cycle” aren’t undergoing the same housing bubble.

So she settles on the second theory, and speaks of the growth of lobbyists and consultants, and the inflation of their pay scales. “There are a lot of interest groups currently dipping into the river of money flowing out of Washington. If the river starts drying up, those groups will need lobbyists more than ever, to defend their position on the riverbank. Every trade association, consumer group, and union in America will descend on Washington to try to deflect the spending cuts and taxes increases onto someone — anyone! — else. The upshot is that it seems as likely as not that DC home prices will stay high for a while, no matter what happens to government spending. That’s great news for my mother and me. But it’s terrible news for America.”

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Harry Jaffe writes that “DC [Is] Squeezing Cars Out — With or Without Drivers,” http://tinyurl.com/8rcmj5o. He writes about the city’s sacrificing a parking lane on L Street downtown in order to replace it with a bike lane. Jaffe comments, “I am of two minds on the L Street project, which could become a battleground between cyclists and drivers. As a cyclist, I am overjoyed. When the city creates a matching bike lane on M Street, perhaps in early 2013, I will be able to commute from home to work in dedicated bike lanes. But as a driver, I question whether it’s fair to autos. I see it creating miles of traffic if cops allow double parking, and I fear accidents if cyclists and drivers don’t respect one another. Bikers always lose.” The plan is to make it ever more difficult and expensive to drive downtown, to reduce parking spaces at every opportunity in order to force people out of cars and into public transportation and onto bicycles.

But the plan is much more likely to force people out of downtown instead, to make it more attractive to live, work, and shop in the suburbs. Jaffe quotes Harriet Tregoning: “DC Planning Director Harriet Tregoning says more and more DC residents are going carless. From 2006 to 2011, 40,000 people moved into the city, which created 60,000 jobs, ‘but we saw the same rate of car ownership. We are shrinking in terms of cars in DC.’ Tregoning — a true believer in biking, walking, and public transportation — says DC weathered the recession in part because many new residents are attracted to the city so they can be carless, pay off student loans, work and throw cash into the economy.” This “planning” focuses on one narrow segment of the population — those who are young, childless, and carless — at the expense of making life harder and less attractive for everyone else. It is as though planners decided that food trucks were the most exciting portion of the food industry and, instead of encouraging food trucks by lessening regulations and restrictions on them, decided instead to discourage traditional restaurants by making them more expensive and increasing restrictions on them.

Instead of trying to encourage people to use public transportation by making it cheaper, more pleasant, and more convenient, our planners are satisfied simply to make it harder to live in the city with a car.

Gary Imhoff
themail@dcwatch.com

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Another Restaurant Recommendation
Bill Rice, bill.rice@dc.gov

Do you know Burleith’s Old Europe?

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Charter Amendments
Lars H. Hydle, larshhydle@aol.com

Do you ethical watchdogs have any advice for voters on Charter Amendments V, VI, and VII?

[Yes, we will, in Sunday’s issue. — Gary Imhoff]