Uneasy Rhetoric

LivingInUrbanSac said something in a comment in my last post that I’ve mentioned in passing, but never really dwelt upon:

Square footage wise, highrise housing will never be as cheap as Natomas, Elk Grove and other suburbs.

He’s absolutely right, but I wish he wasn’t. My fantasy — and part of the reason I’ve mildly advocated for mid-rise rather than high-rise developments — is that developers of multi-family, high-density dwellings would be able to compete effectively with sub- and exurban development for the same market. That is, for small families who will establish themselves in a neighborhood long-term. Mid-rises are cheaper to build than high-rises.

A family who takes a long-term view might actually find that spending more money on housing that is close to work will balance out with the additional commute costs of a house far from work.

For example, right now, it is possible to buy a three-bedroom, two-bath home in Gridley, California, for less than 300,000. Gridley is about 60 miles from Sacramento, or about an hour and a half by car in moderate traffic. It’s a quiet town that most people experience as a strip mall and some gas stations on their way to Chico. When people think about a “simpler” life, a nice place to raise kids, or that small town feel, Gridley is it.

But let’s assume you’re a state worker and you’ve decided to live this exurban existence. You commute 60 miles every day from your modest home in Gridley to Sacramento. You own a fuel-efficient car that averages 30 miles to the gallon. At $3.35 per gallon, you’re spending $13.40 per day on gas, or about $280 per month. You pay $150/month for parking (I know state workers might be able to get better deals). That’s over $400 a month, just on transportation. And let’s not forget that if you want to go shopping for anything except groceries, or if you want to go to a movie or some other kind of event, you’re going to have to drive at least to Yuba City. Chances are you’re going to spend a lot more than $400 a month on that car. Plus, there is the opportunity cost of lost time in traffic. You might be able to learn Spanish but really, how many of us who commute that kind of distance (and I did at one time) will really be diligent enough to do that? And how many of us own a car that averages as much as 30 miles to the gallon (I do, but I’m weird. I average about 33)?

What does that mean for your house payment? If you’re paying $1,900 a month for the house in Gridley, you could be paying $2,300 a month for a home in Sacramento. That means theoretically you could afford a home worth about $390,000 in Sacramento (based on conservative calculations but a big down payment). Yep, you’re still going to live in Natomas, and you’re still going to have to pay for parking because the bus service out there sucks.

But I’m convinced that with the right kind of high-density development, and a little more sensitivity to the middle-income family market, it could be possible to make downtown, or at least higher-density, living palatable to a whole class of people who might never have considered it before. If you never spend any time in your yard, do you really need one? If your idea of cooking is to abbreviate Rachael Ray’s 30 minute meals, do you really need a big kitchen? If you’re trying to save money, wouldn’t having a smaller home save on energy bills?

Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a town where the newspaper has decent copy editing and doesn’t run the police blotter every issue? Do you really need to know that Mildred Smith called the cops because the lid was off of her flour jar and she didn’t remember opening it?

And there’s something you’d have to worry about all the time in Gridley that wouldn’t be so much of an issue in a condo in midtown Sacramento:

Via ricmcarthur on Flickr