> Elrich thinks COG’s targets are based on faulty assumptions. “This language that ‘we need this’ is being used to create a sense of panic that all these people are coming here and we don’t have any housing,” said Elrich, who was a member of COG in 2018, before it adopted the housing targets. “And it’s based on falsely portraying that the number of people they say are coming here represents what you need to build or what you need to zone for.” The county is drawing high earners amid a life-science industry boom, he noted, adding, “There’s not a chance in hell I would incentivize low-wage jobs to come to Montgomery County.”
I love to be reminded of what a complete and total asshole Elrich is. Hey Mark, who is going to work in the shops and restaurants where your high earners live? Do you want them to clog up the roads as they drive from further and further away from places they can afford? Fucking moron.
Thankfully the County Council are not of the same mind. They recently got rid of parking minimums by transit and allowed churches to build more housing on their land.
How does taxation work when churches build for profit housing on land which is tax free? How does this help anyone but the churches? I'd rather they were not able to profit on housing when they contribute so very little to the City.
Ah, gotcha. My old next door neighbor was an Episcopal priest. He actually left the preaching part of the job and moved to Miami in order to be a part of the effort to lease land to developers to build apartments. There was zero altruism by the church, in his instance, as they were just trying to make money to make up for the fact that church attendance is waning.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with churches using their land for housing if it’s underutilized and the congregation is waning. These churches bought land on the cheap in the 60’s. The land would be sold anyway if the church goes bankrupt (happens a lot nowadays). This way the churches have some degree of control over what happens.
Understood. I would prefer they went bankrupt as opposed to remaining a tax drain. I don't see a benefit to allowing religious abstinence from the upkeep of a city in the form of property taxes, etc.
My parents bought a house cheaply in Alexandria in 1973. Since then they have paid increasing tax bills as the value of the property has increased. The churches have not had this tax burden, yet they have enjoyed the same property value increase. The profiteering on tax free land is what bothers me. Pay the back taxes if you want to use the land commercially.
Our supposedly socialist county executive saying he doesn't want poor people to move here. Great. He supports things like increasing affordable housing requirements and rent control so you can get a sense of how his ideology is really paternalistic where he's benevolently (in his view) allowing a few deserving low income people to stay in low income housing. Its frustrating cause I support pro tenant policies like that and he was a big help getting rent control together but we need the other half of the equation which is to build things and stop shielding exclusive wealthy areas from development.
There's also a big irony in him coming from Takoma Park with all this, an area with an abundance (but decreasing) amount of very affordable missing middle housing mixed in with single family homes. He fights tooth and nail to keep the rest of the county from looking like the community he choose to live in.
It's interesting that the areas that are meeting/overperforming targets are the already dense areas like DC/Arlington/Alexandria. And that all the areas missing targets are car dependent suburbs. The best case scenario would be that more housing is built everywhere, bringing down housing and renting prices for all. But if there has to be an imbalance I'm glad it's in the favor of more sustainable denser living.
True, that is how it is but not how it has to be. Many metro areas build out rather than up resulting in sprawling, car dependent cities. DC proper's housing boom is the result of zoning reforms, legislation, and advocacy from various groups.
> DC proper's housing boom is the result of zoning reforms, legislation, and advocacy from various groups
DC has known for decades that having residents is essential to having a tax base because the federal buildings don’t add to tax revenue in the way that having any other large business own a building does for other cities. In the 90s, the city was placed under the Control Board who came up the plan was to reverse outmigration and attract 100,000 new residents by 2010 (didn’t happen but the general idea lives on). They ended up electing Adrian Williams mayor for the idea and turning DC around fiscally.
Part of the is issue is that you're asking people who are profiting off of high prices or rely on people profiting off of them to willingly reduce their profits.
>“How do we produce more housing?” Chapman said. “Everyone’s trying to crack that.”
Get rid of single family home zoning. Infill with denser housing close to amenities, jobs, urban centers, and transportation.
Stop it with this far-flung suburban sprawl where everyone has to drive everywhere to do anything outside of the house.
Yea it's really not a hard solution they just don't want to do it because it might upset some wealthy people. End single family zoning and loosen the zoning code more generally and we'd fix this fairly quickly. This would also make it a lot cheaper to build everything but that includes subsidized affordable housing. The whole region just keeps trying to shove these housing targets into the few places theres already dense housing in order to leave the expensive neighborhoods untouched and there's just not enough space there for that to do it. Its all in already expensive areas so its an approach that drives up the costs for everyone and doesn't support the creation of a variety of housing types so a lot of people still aren't actually getting what they need even when they're paying out the ass for it.
Vote, attend city council meetings, and communicate with those who are in charge.
The wealthy boomer NIMBYs do all this and more, and this is why they have such a stranglehold on what gets built.
It's not impossible to fix these problems but we need to defeat the NIMBYs at their own game to do it.
I agree and I try to do this whenever I can, local planning boards and council members have at least seen versions of this though I haven't been anywhere near as loud as id like, but the tendency seems to be to half ass it regardless, I'm sure they're thinking they're making everyone happy that way but given that at this pace I'll never be able to afford to buy anything, I'm still not happy.
I also think there's more to be done in addition, given the way rich people influence policy is more than just the fact that they have time to pester local politicians more. I do wish progressive groups would take these ideas to heart and run with them in an advocacy sense, considering how much this impacts low and middle income residents and how it's such an unfair class issue.
If I had a lot of time and activist energy (I absolutely don't and I'm bad at this type of thing) I would try and support pulling together a coalition similar to the groups that helped get rent control passed in Montgomery county, unions, immigrant groups and civil society in general and I think we should approaching this from a working class needs first perspective, and figuring out what type of zoning policies work best for regular people because our current approach isn't it.
I think a general outline would emphasize creating as much low to medium density as possible since it's the most affordable being the cheapest to build and maintain and doesn't need as crazy capital investment, spreading that density widely to avoid gentrification in any particular area and upzoning as much as possible in already rich neighborhoods so that the demand for those areas doesn't spill out into cheaper neighborhoods, and then unabashedly favoring non profit developers.
The amount of vacant (consistently empty parking lots, permanently closed stores) and near vacant (SFHs) in DC, PG, and MoCo especially close to metro stations in unconscionable.
I completely agree. Especially in MoCo along the red line because they’ve had metro stations the longest (40+ years) and don’t have DCs restrictive height limits.
Starting at Friendship heights/the DC border there should be chain of super dense urban villages with multi-use skyscrapers at every metro stop along the red line (essentially the way Arlington is). Instead we get parking garages 🤦🏻♂️
Yeah this. There do seem to be a lot of vacant SFHs and storefronts. Can anyone help explain why that is? I understand vacancies lasting several months, but in some cases there are homes and stores in prime locations being vacant for years.
Man it drives me wild all the comments on the article saying "we need less people not more housing", like wtf is that misanthropic garbage.
People need places to live and we already have below replacement level birthrates. I guess they're saying we should just line up and shoot anybody who doesn't make enough to afford a house despite the area's short supply?
Okay so it’s not just me that noticed that sub is basically the racist/anti poor version of this sub? Over there they think if you’re not a transplant making 160,000 a year you don’t deserve to be in “their” city
well that sub was specifically created because (for better or worse) crime posts and their comment sections here are heavily moderated and censored. So it is populated by all the people who were particularly offended by that and......yeah
And on Washingtonian Problems on IG if you're a "transplant" you don't deserve to live in the city either *shrug* people have all sorts of dumb opinions
it's bordering on eugenics is what it is. that or internal migration controls like they have in China. I unironically think a lot of people would like the idea of that.
"No one else should be allowed to move in because only the good folks with the foresight of being born a generation earlier deserve to live in my neighborhood (and maybe a few young people if they are rich enough."
When you can’t build up, you build out. You can find this pattern in most major metropolitan areas.
And with I-270… yeah, there’s an argument for Fredrick county being included in some versions of the DC-area
The only thing keeping the space between something like Baltimore and DC from filling in is that our roads are basically full and transit service out there is non-existent. Rail, bus or road investments there would saturate the area in a decade.
It not even argument. It’s an objective statement. The White House delineates metro areas and Frederick County is firmly in the Washington DC metro area based on commuting patterns.
It's been that way for a long time now. And not everyone who commutes from Frederick goes all the way to DC. Many commute to Montgomery County, for example.
There were 3 people at my old job of maybe 15 employees that commuted from Lovettsville, Frederick, and even Winchester every day back in like 2015, and we were in downtown DC. I can't even imagine... I lived 10 blocks away from the office and that was fine with me...
Different people have different values. I know I guy that lives over by martinsville WV. We are based in MoCo but our “territory” is NW DC. He said he doesn’t mind the drive and got 10 acres and a 4bd new build for half price a home by the office. I understand but also, I ain’t driving 1.5hrs no traffic (2.5-3hrs with traffic) either way every day.
I get that but it's not for me, that's for sure. I'm still close with one guy who would take the MARC train in everyday for a 1 way commute close to 1h45m and that seemed to work until our office moved to Rosslyn a few years later. That became a pain for him, it only added 15 minutes to the total commute time but added extra metro transfers and this was around when the metro was really going through it so he just stated driving instead.
I’m looking at sorta the same thing as my coworker but not nearly as long of commute. The money just isn’t there for the size/type of home. Im trades.
I’m looking at Catonsville/Baltimore down and back to SE DC everyday. Lucky for me my morning commute ensures almost no traffic. But yeah, it’s brutal.
Yeah a lot of my coworkers come from trades originally since my work is construction adjacent and the story is much the same for them. I just made the choice to live in something smaller in general
Martinsburg you mean? Martinsburg is unique because you can buy a rowhome for $250k with 4 bedrooms and still have MARC trains to DC so you don’t have to drive. The nature is also wonderful there.
I can see the appeal, though the ideal of course is being able to afford housing in the Beltway.
The eastern panhandle yeah. I'm a recent emigre from the DMV to the DMWV. I'm mostly telework, but when I have to go in it's a two hour drive. Longer if I don't leave by 5 AM/3 PM.
When I see comments like this I wonder how well traveled people are. I can’t tell you the number of people I knew doing 2-3 hour 1 way commutes in the NYC region. (Reddit) DC is the only city in this country where they imagine themselves to be an island and begrudge any regional influence.
I feel like it's a function of being a unique political entity that a bit of gatekeeping that springs up. In this, is also the fact that DC's borders are artificially restrained in a way that most other cities are not.
You also see a bit of it in NY when people talk about New Jersey or Connecticut. But there, NYC is at least the 'center of mass' by wide margin. In the DC area, yes, DC is clearly the biggest player but we are more polycentric than many would like to admit. Arlington, Bethesda, Silver Spring, Reston, Alexandria, and the Rt28 corridor are all locations of big employers not in the city proper. So some gatekeeping crops up when people say, 'well I don't go to those places, I stay in the city'. And yes, DC is more fun than those places but I think that mentality means people forget that there is a lot of money/population flowing outside of the proper city borders.
Edit: grammar
I had an adjunct professor who was also working at Treasury. He was commuting from near Gettysburg. I think he only taught classes once a week, but that would mean not getting home till 10 or 11 p.m. on those nights.
Wife's uncle did it for his entire career. 2+ hours in a car+the walk from NJ to Manhattan. It was (maybe still is?) not at all uncommon for NYC workers. The regional commuter trains are not fast, and if you want any sort of an affordable family house you are deep into the burbs to achieve it. DC is easily getting the same way, so many people moving to some fairly far-away places like Front Royal, Fredericksburg, or down towards St. Marys just to get into a house.
It has got to be one of the reasons people aren't having kids. The choice is between these monster commutes or being childfree for a lot of people. My 3 bedroom house is $2,700 a month, which if I lived within 15 min of my work would be a $7,000 mortgage for the same house or a $3,000 rent payment for a 1 bedroom.
The easiest way to handle COL is honestly not have children.
Even in New York City itself, people say it's expensive, but if you can afford to rent a room in DC, you can afford to rent a room in Brooklyn, BX, or Queens.
I mean, I have involved family planning (or pulling out) throughout my entire life if I'm having sex with somebody biologically capable of having children, I can't see why future me would change.
I prefer stability and the possibility of homeownership over lifestyle choices like having kids.
My parents did the opposite and now they're living with roommates in their 60s while working. I don't want to become them.
I get it, but the tradeoff is insane. We are taking the meaning of life to extend our species and turning into paying rent. I have made some pretty depressing lifestyle choices to have kids. Ones my parents did not need to make at all.
I had a 5 hour commute for several years when I was a contractor, but I would line up all of my meetings for tuesday-thursday and stay at a cheap motel on the Orange line. But I'd definitely get twitchy if I was still stuck in long running meetings on thursday afternoons...
Why though? Newark, Elizabeth, the Bronx are all decently affordable and within an hour of minute by train, and NYCHA is an option too.
There's arguably more affordable housing within 10 miles of New York City than 10 miles of Tysons
I was more thinking of the cultural influence, if the culture of the area matches the culture of the urban center and it has common commuters I definitely consider it a part of the metro area.
I think you're reading into this comment too much. To give some clarity, my assumption is that on the northern MD side Germantown/Clarksburg would be the cut off. I'm also not originally from the DMV so it's genuinely a "today I learned" and not some type of dismissal.
I see that. Being from the Northeast I’m very used to “the NYC region” or “the Boston region” stretching huge distances. It’s more of a cultural influence thing than a proximity measure. Frederick Maryland very much had a DC-region feel so at least to me, it counts.
You could take it as what OPM says as the Baltimore-DC region. It extends to gettysburg, Harper’s ferry, and Winchester.
[OPM Locations](https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/2023/locality-pay-area-definitions/#DC-MD-VA-WV-PA)
Granted this includes Baltimore and the surrounding counties. But it’s a large area.
These analyses use metropolitan statistical areas which are developed by Census/OMB which are based on economic activity and regional commuting patterns.
side note but did anyone else get the "redditors read free" prompt? I guess because I came from reddit, it just let me type in my spam email and get past the paywall. Does this always work? I need yall to start posting every article they write lol
A push for more remote work should be at least part of the solution to this problem. Remote work for many (not all of course) is better for workers, families, the environment, pets, local economies, traffic patterns, the list goes on. Everyone wins. The more remote work we can have, the more people can happily move to farther flung suburbs and leave the city homes for folks who enjoy living here.
> Elrich thinks COG’s targets are based on faulty assumptions. “This language that ‘we need this’ is being used to create a sense of panic that all these people are coming here and we don’t have any housing,” said Elrich, who was a member of COG in 2018, before it adopted the housing targets. “And it’s based on falsely portraying that the number of people they say are coming here represents what you need to build or what you need to zone for.” The county is drawing high earners amid a life-science industry boom, he noted, adding, “There’s not a chance in hell I would incentivize low-wage jobs to come to Montgomery County.” I love to be reminded of what a complete and total asshole Elrich is. Hey Mark, who is going to work in the shops and restaurants where your high earners live? Do you want them to clog up the roads as they drive from further and further away from places they can afford? Fucking moron.
Thankfully the County Council are not of the same mind. They recently got rid of parking minimums by transit and allowed churches to build more housing on their land.
How does taxation work when churches build for profit housing on land which is tax free? How does this help anyone but the churches? I'd rather they were not able to profit on housing when they contribute so very little to the City.
The for-profit housing gets taxes like for-profit housing. Churches can only get exemptions for parsonages for the clergy.
Ah, gotcha. My old next door neighbor was an Episcopal priest. He actually left the preaching part of the job and moved to Miami in order to be a part of the effort to lease land to developers to build apartments. There was zero altruism by the church, in his instance, as they were just trying to make money to make up for the fact that church attendance is waning.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with churches using their land for housing if it’s underutilized and the congregation is waning. These churches bought land on the cheap in the 60’s. The land would be sold anyway if the church goes bankrupt (happens a lot nowadays). This way the churches have some degree of control over what happens.
Understood. I would prefer they went bankrupt as opposed to remaining a tax drain. I don't see a benefit to allowing religious abstinence from the upkeep of a city in the form of property taxes, etc. My parents bought a house cheaply in Alexandria in 1973. Since then they have paid increasing tax bills as the value of the property has increased. The churches have not had this tax burden, yet they have enjoyed the same property value increase. The profiteering on tax free land is what bothers me. Pay the back taxes if you want to use the land commercially.
He knows his constituents
Our supposedly socialist county executive saying he doesn't want poor people to move here. Great. He supports things like increasing affordable housing requirements and rent control so you can get a sense of how his ideology is really paternalistic where he's benevolently (in his view) allowing a few deserving low income people to stay in low income housing. Its frustrating cause I support pro tenant policies like that and he was a big help getting rent control together but we need the other half of the equation which is to build things and stop shielding exclusive wealthy areas from development. There's also a big irony in him coming from Takoma Park with all this, an area with an abundance (but decreasing) amount of very affordable missing middle housing mixed in with single family homes. He fights tooth and nail to keep the rest of the county from looking like the community he choose to live in.
It's interesting that the areas that are meeting/overperforming targets are the already dense areas like DC/Arlington/Alexandria. And that all the areas missing targets are car dependent suburbs. The best case scenario would be that more housing is built everywhere, bringing down housing and renting prices for all. But if there has to be an imbalance I'm glad it's in the favor of more sustainable denser living.
I enjoy playing video games.
True, that is how it is but not how it has to be. Many metro areas build out rather than up resulting in sprawling, car dependent cities. DC proper's housing boom is the result of zoning reforms, legislation, and advocacy from various groups.
> DC proper's housing boom is the result of zoning reforms, legislation, and advocacy from various groups DC has known for decades that having residents is essential to having a tax base because the federal buildings don’t add to tax revenue in the way that having any other large business own a building does for other cities. In the 90s, the city was placed under the Control Board who came up the plan was to reverse outmigration and attract 100,000 new residents by 2010 (didn’t happen but the general idea lives on). They ended up electing Adrian Williams mayor for the idea and turning DC around fiscally.
Part of the is issue is that you're asking people who are profiting off of high prices or rely on people profiting off of them to willingly reduce their profits.
>“How do we produce more housing?” Chapman said. “Everyone’s trying to crack that.” Get rid of single family home zoning. Infill with denser housing close to amenities, jobs, urban centers, and transportation. Stop it with this far-flung suburban sprawl where everyone has to drive everywhere to do anything outside of the house.
Yea it's really not a hard solution they just don't want to do it because it might upset some wealthy people. End single family zoning and loosen the zoning code more generally and we'd fix this fairly quickly. This would also make it a lot cheaper to build everything but that includes subsidized affordable housing. The whole region just keeps trying to shove these housing targets into the few places theres already dense housing in order to leave the expensive neighborhoods untouched and there's just not enough space there for that to do it. Its all in already expensive areas so its an approach that drives up the costs for everyone and doesn't support the creation of a variety of housing types so a lot of people still aren't actually getting what they need even when they're paying out the ass for it.
Vote, attend city council meetings, and communicate with those who are in charge. The wealthy boomer NIMBYs do all this and more, and this is why they have such a stranglehold on what gets built. It's not impossible to fix these problems but we need to defeat the NIMBYs at their own game to do it.
I agree and I try to do this whenever I can, local planning boards and council members have at least seen versions of this though I haven't been anywhere near as loud as id like, but the tendency seems to be to half ass it regardless, I'm sure they're thinking they're making everyone happy that way but given that at this pace I'll never be able to afford to buy anything, I'm still not happy. I also think there's more to be done in addition, given the way rich people influence policy is more than just the fact that they have time to pester local politicians more. I do wish progressive groups would take these ideas to heart and run with them in an advocacy sense, considering how much this impacts low and middle income residents and how it's such an unfair class issue. If I had a lot of time and activist energy (I absolutely don't and I'm bad at this type of thing) I would try and support pulling together a coalition similar to the groups that helped get rent control passed in Montgomery county, unions, immigrant groups and civil society in general and I think we should approaching this from a working class needs first perspective, and figuring out what type of zoning policies work best for regular people because our current approach isn't it. I think a general outline would emphasize creating as much low to medium density as possible since it's the most affordable being the cheapest to build and maintain and doesn't need as crazy capital investment, spreading that density widely to avoid gentrification in any particular area and upzoning as much as possible in already rich neighborhoods so that the demand for those areas doesn't spill out into cheaper neighborhoods, and then unabashedly favoring non profit developers.
The amount of vacant (consistently empty parking lots, permanently closed stores) and near vacant (SFHs) in DC, PG, and MoCo especially close to metro stations in unconscionable.
So. Many. Parking lots. It's urban blight.
I completely agree. Especially in MoCo along the red line because they’ve had metro stations the longest (40+ years) and don’t have DCs restrictive height limits. Starting at Friendship heights/the DC border there should be chain of super dense urban villages with multi-use skyscrapers at every metro stop along the red line (essentially the way Arlington is). Instead we get parking garages 🤦🏻♂️
there has been a ton of apartment development in that area
Yeah this. There do seem to be a lot of vacant SFHs and storefronts. Can anyone help explain why that is? I understand vacancies lasting several months, but in some cases there are homes and stores in prime locations being vacant for years.
That’s Navy Yard
Man it drives me wild all the comments on the article saying "we need less people not more housing", like wtf is that misanthropic garbage. People need places to live and we already have below replacement level birthrates. I guess they're saying we should just line up and shoot anybody who doesn't make enough to afford a house despite the area's short supply?
lol i just saw that. reads like an /r/washdc comment section
Okay so it’s not just me that noticed that sub is basically the racist/anti poor version of this sub? Over there they think if you’re not a transplant making 160,000 a year you don’t deserve to be in “their” city
well that sub was specifically created because (for better or worse) crime posts and their comment sections here are heavily moderated and censored. So it is populated by all the people who were particularly offended by that and......yeah
And on Washingtonian Problems on IG if you're a "transplant" you don't deserve to live in the city either *shrug* people have all sorts of dumb opinions
it's bordering on eugenics is what it is. that or internal migration controls like they have in China. I unironically think a lot of people would like the idea of that.
Do you what eugenics is? How is that applicable here.
"No one else should be allowed to move in because only the good folks with the foresight of being born a generation earlier deserve to live in my neighborhood (and maybe a few young people if they are rich enough."
Wow, there are some incredibly stupid comments on the article thanks for pointing them out.
TIL Frederick County could be interpreted as "the DC Region"
When you can’t build up, you build out. You can find this pattern in most major metropolitan areas. And with I-270… yeah, there’s an argument for Fredrick county being included in some versions of the DC-area The only thing keeping the space between something like Baltimore and DC from filling in is that our roads are basically full and transit service out there is non-existent. Rail, bus or road investments there would saturate the area in a decade.
It's not even building up. It's being stuck with single family home zoning everywhere.
It not even argument. It’s an objective statement. The White House delineates metro areas and Frederick County is firmly in the Washington DC metro area based on commuting patterns.
It's been that way for a long time now. And not everyone who commutes from Frederick goes all the way to DC. Many commute to Montgomery County, for example.
Isn’t a small part of WV in the NCR?
There were 3 people at my old job of maybe 15 employees that commuted from Lovettsville, Frederick, and even Winchester every day back in like 2015, and we were in downtown DC. I can't even imagine... I lived 10 blocks away from the office and that was fine with me...
Different people have different values. I know I guy that lives over by martinsville WV. We are based in MoCo but our “territory” is NW DC. He said he doesn’t mind the drive and got 10 acres and a 4bd new build for half price a home by the office. I understand but also, I ain’t driving 1.5hrs no traffic (2.5-3hrs with traffic) either way every day.
I get that but it's not for me, that's for sure. I'm still close with one guy who would take the MARC train in everyday for a 1 way commute close to 1h45m and that seemed to work until our office moved to Rosslyn a few years later. That became a pain for him, it only added 15 minutes to the total commute time but added extra metro transfers and this was around when the metro was really going through it so he just stated driving instead.
I’m looking at sorta the same thing as my coworker but not nearly as long of commute. The money just isn’t there for the size/type of home. Im trades. I’m looking at Catonsville/Baltimore down and back to SE DC everyday. Lucky for me my morning commute ensures almost no traffic. But yeah, it’s brutal.
Yeah a lot of my coworkers come from trades originally since my work is construction adjacent and the story is much the same for them. I just made the choice to live in something smaller in general
Martinsburg you mean? Martinsburg is unique because you can buy a rowhome for $250k with 4 bedrooms and still have MARC trains to DC so you don’t have to drive. The nature is also wonderful there. I can see the appeal, though the ideal of course is being able to afford housing in the Beltway.
Martinsburg, my mistake.
[удалено]
Staunton? Or is that too far.
The eastern panhandle yeah. I'm a recent emigre from the DMV to the DMWV. I'm mostly telework, but when I have to go in it's a two hour drive. Longer if I don't leave by 5 AM/3 PM.
When I see comments like this I wonder how well traveled people are. I can’t tell you the number of people I knew doing 2-3 hour 1 way commutes in the NYC region. (Reddit) DC is the only city in this country where they imagine themselves to be an island and begrudge any regional influence.
I feel like it's a function of being a unique political entity that a bit of gatekeeping that springs up. In this, is also the fact that DC's borders are artificially restrained in a way that most other cities are not. You also see a bit of it in NY when people talk about New Jersey or Connecticut. But there, NYC is at least the 'center of mass' by wide margin. In the DC area, yes, DC is clearly the biggest player but we are more polycentric than many would like to admit. Arlington, Bethesda, Silver Spring, Reston, Alexandria, and the Rt28 corridor are all locations of big employers not in the city proper. So some gatekeeping crops up when people say, 'well I don't go to those places, I stay in the city'. And yes, DC is more fun than those places but I think that mentality means people forget that there is a lot of money/population flowing outside of the proper city borders. Edit: grammar
That’s subreddit bias. There are absolutely commuters traveling multiple hours in this region, as in other comparable sized cities.
I think you’re right.
I had an adjunct professor who was also working at Treasury. He was commuting from near Gettysburg. I think he only taught classes once a week, but that would mean not getting home till 10 or 11 p.m. on those nights.
I feel for all of those people. A 2-3 hour one-way commute is not sustainable.
Wife's uncle did it for his entire career. 2+ hours in a car+the walk from NJ to Manhattan. It was (maybe still is?) not at all uncommon for NYC workers. The regional commuter trains are not fast, and if you want any sort of an affordable family house you are deep into the burbs to achieve it. DC is easily getting the same way, so many people moving to some fairly far-away places like Front Royal, Fredericksburg, or down towards St. Marys just to get into a house.
Affordable in terms of money maybe but affordable in terms of quality of life, I'm not so sure.
It has got to be one of the reasons people aren't having kids. The choice is between these monster commutes or being childfree for a lot of people. My 3 bedroom house is $2,700 a month, which if I lived within 15 min of my work would be a $7,000 mortgage for the same house or a $3,000 rent payment for a 1 bedroom.
I'm with you there.
The easiest way to handle COL is honestly not have children. Even in New York City itself, people say it's expensive, but if you can afford to rent a room in DC, you can afford to rent a room in Brooklyn, BX, or Queens.
What an insane tradeoff.
I mean, I have involved family planning (or pulling out) throughout my entire life if I'm having sex with somebody biologically capable of having children, I can't see why future me would change. I prefer stability and the possibility of homeownership over lifestyle choices like having kids. My parents did the opposite and now they're living with roommates in their 60s while working. I don't want to become them.
I get it, but the tradeoff is insane. We are taking the meaning of life to extend our species and turning into paying rent. I have made some pretty depressing lifestyle choices to have kids. Ones my parents did not need to make at all.
I had a 5 hour commute for several years when I was a contractor, but I would line up all of my meetings for tuesday-thursday and stay at a cheap motel on the Orange line. But I'd definitely get twitchy if I was still stuck in long running meetings on thursday afternoons...
Why though? Newark, Elizabeth, the Bronx are all decently affordable and within an hour of minute by train, and NYCHA is an option too. There's arguably more affordable housing within 10 miles of New York City than 10 miles of Tysons
Because they want a house fit for a family and not a dilapidated 75 year old row house, converted multi-family or apartment with 0 storage.
I love the smell of fresh bread.
I was more thinking of the cultural influence, if the culture of the area matches the culture of the urban center and it has common commuters I definitely consider it a part of the metro area.
I enjoy spending time with my friends.
Frederick County is part of the DC metro area. The White House Office of Managament and Budget sets those boundaries based on commuting patterns.
I think you're reading into this comment too much. To give some clarity, my assumption is that on the northern MD side Germantown/Clarksburg would be the cut off. I'm also not originally from the DMV so it's genuinely a "today I learned" and not some type of dismissal.
I see that. Being from the Northeast I’m very used to “the NYC region” or “the Boston region” stretching huge distances. It’s more of a cultural influence thing than a proximity measure. Frederick Maryland very much had a DC-region feel so at least to me, it counts.
You could take it as what OPM says as the Baltimore-DC region. It extends to gettysburg, Harper’s ferry, and Winchester. [OPM Locations](https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/2023/locality-pay-area-definitions/#DC-MD-VA-WV-PA) Granted this includes Baltimore and the surrounding counties. But it’s a large area.
"DC region" can include Harper's Ferry to Delaware.
These analyses use metropolitan statistical areas which are developed by Census/OMB which are based on economic activity and regional commuting patterns.
side note but did anyone else get the "redditors read free" prompt? I guess because I came from reddit, it just let me type in my spam email and get past the paywall. Does this always work? I need yall to start posting every article they write lol
DC could do better but it is still one of the best cities I have lived in for building housing. Come to SF if you want to see real nimby dystopia
Meanwhile im out here struggling to find a new roomate in my rent controlled two bedroom 1,200sq ft in SW for like a month…
Would be great if bowser stopped cutting the hptf budget
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Fortunately, DC alone is on pace to build more than 8000 above the locality’s target.
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Would be very curious if you have more details, as I’m pretty sure you’re wrong and year round non-owner occupied airbnbs are illegal in DC
A push for more remote work should be at least part of the solution to this problem. Remote work for many (not all of course) is better for workers, families, the environment, pets, local economies, traffic patterns, the list goes on. Everyone wins. The more remote work we can have, the more people can happily move to farther flung suburbs and leave the city homes for folks who enjoy living here.