Housing
Location
% of New Affordable Units Within ½ Mile of Frequent Transit
(Work in Progress)
% of Washingtonians that Live in Jursidictions that have Eliminated Parking Minimums
Cumulative percent of residents living without minimum parking requirements.
Key Points
• Location means housing built near transit, jobs, schools, and community, not wherever land happens to be cheapest.
• Affordability achieved through isolation isn't real affordability; it shifts cost from rent to commute time and car dependency.
• Goal: a strong majority of housing within walking distance of frequent transit.
What is it?
Location means housing gets built where people actually want and need to live: near transit, near jobs, near schools, near the daily fabric of a community, not relegated to whatever parcel happens to be cheapest or furthest from opportunity. This applies to all housing, not just subsidized units, but affordable and subsidized housing is where this principle is most often violated and where it’s also the most measurable, since public dollars and public data track those units closely. Where a unit sits determines what its residents have access to for as long as they live there.
Why Location Matters
Affordability achieved by isolation isn’t really affordability. A unit that’s cheap because it’s an hour from any job center or transit line shifts the cost from rent to commute time, car dependency, and lost opportunity. Housing policy that doesn’t account for location risks concentrating subsidized housing in the places with the least access, reproducing the same patterns of exclusion the broader platform is trying to undo. Location is what makes housing a gateway to opportunity rather than a holding pattern, and that’s true whether the unit is market rate or income restricted. We track it through affordable housing data because that’s where the data exists, not because the principle stops there.
Where We Want to Be
The goal is for new affordable housing to be sited on equal footing with market rate housing rather than pushed to the periphery, as one visible proxy for the larger goal of well located housing across the board. Concretely: a strong majority of new affordable units within walking distance of frequent transit, average Walk Scores for affordable developments comparable to citywide averages rather than trailing them, and a meaningful and growing share of subsidized units located in high opportunity census tracts rather than concentrated in historically disinvested ones. The narrative goal is simple. Where you can afford to live should not determine whether you can reach a job, a grocery store, or a park within a reasonable walk or transit ride.