BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

Bump!

Streetsblag has a link to some fancy map of regional housing and transportation costs as a function of income.

Neat stuff. Proves what we already knew, of course... and just in time for transit cuts.

It would be interesting to map the locations of foreclosed properties to these two charts.

One thing I already see: The parts of McCandless that currently do have transit service have a lower Housing + Transportation Costs figure than the parts that do not. In some cases, much lower.

Where I am, for instance, the Housing side has 38%, with 63% for Housing + Transportation. Compare that to the Lake Marshall area just past North Park, at 109% on the housing side alone, and 137% H+T. Wow!

sloaps, those maps are wicked cool. And explains a lot.

So when is it that who tells people that they should spend no more than 30% of their money on a house? I missed that class, as did all of my neighbors. I was told 50% by... someone, somewhere. My area is at 41% and 64% combined. And we have a bunch of city buses zooming past headed down town. But I guess at ~4% transit ridership, that's to be expected.

I wonder how this is skewed by the proportion of retirees in a neighborhood. Just because they don't have a big income doesn't mean the housing is not afforable for them, if they own a house outright that they paid off over 30 years while they did have an income.

Does anyone know about that statistic where the average USAican only walks ~400m per day? I always found that pretty dubious.

For a long time, I lived on a block with many apartments. My block was about 800 ft from the convenience store. Less than 1/6 mile.

I often passed neighbors three times in 10 minutes - getting into their car, going into the convenience store, and then getting back out of their cars back at home. Some would illegally park so they wouldn't have to walk the extra 70 ft from the legal parking spaces.

Hey. Someone has to support those poor BP execs who keep getting picked on by the mean, socialist Obama administration. Oiling your bike chain ain't gonna pay the BP executive retirement fund.

You want these guys to languish in poverty? They might have to join one of the less exclusive country clubs if my neighbors stopped driving like that.

@ejwme So when is it that who tells people that they should spend no more than 30% of their money on a house? I missed that class...

I'm pretty sure anyone who applies for a mortgage gets the cliff notes.

Imagine the hell that would be raised if this idea got out among the home-buying set:

"Would you bet a 30-year mortgage that you will still be able to live in this car-access-only house you're looking at, if getting around by car becomes untenable?"

Mick - when I applied for my mortgage, I was approved for credit that would have been 4 times my annual salary. At the best interest rates and the longest loans that would have put me at about 75% of my income or so. Luckily something in the back of my head tweaked at that, and I ended up getting a house I could occupy, not the house they said I could afford (seriously, how many bathrooms should I be able to shower in simultaneously? and where would my as of yet theoretical children get to go to high school? really?). But that was before their Debt House of Cards came crashing down around them.

Stu - my mother has been using a good synonym for that thought to irk my grandmother for the past 30 years (as a reason she can't move the (then) grandbabies closer)... "But I have to DRIVE _everywhere_ and it's so FAR from everything! I don't want to spend my life in a car - if I want green space I'll go to Frick Park, which I don't have to mow and has lots of playmates for the kids." For city-slickers, getting around by car has always been untenable.

My problem has always been landing sub/exurban jobs, but wanting to be in the city. Either I've got an unearthly daily commute but the rest of my life is walkable, or I've got a manageable daily commute but nothing else is close. Now that my job moved on me, I've got the worst of both worlds. I'm just an urbanite in a suburban world.