Robert McCartney:

We'll hear more from Valecia later.

Leaders are grappling with how to ensure that our communities enjoy the benefits of the resulting economic growth that comes with greater access without pushing up housing prices so much that existing residents are forced to move. We're going to look at a few examples of what local governments are doing to optimize areas around what COG calls high capacity transit or HCTs. These include inner suburbs in Maryland, where the Purple Line is being built as well as more on Congress Heights, an inner city neighborhood in Southeast DC. But let's start in an outer suburb, Loudoun County, just beyond Dulles Airport. Early next year, it's scheduled to open its first Metrorail stations when the Silver Line is completed. I talked to Phyllis Randal, chair of the Loudoun Board of Supervisors. What has the arrival of the Silver Line meant for the neighborhoods around the two stations? How's has it affected those communities?

Phyllis Randall:

Well, it's an interesting question because to a large degree, those communities have not been built yet. And to a large degree, they will be built up around the metro stations. And what I've always said is what you want around metros is dense, vertical development that also has great infrastructure. So you want to have great schools, urban schools, you want to have parks, fire and rescue, green space, police or Sheriff's departments. We have had a very extensive jump in the value of homes, and so we hope people don't want to leave our wonderful county. But if they do, they will get a good price on the homes.

Robert McCartney:

I want to come back to that very important point you make a about how the prices have gone up quite a bit with the impending arrival of Metro. But I want you to talk a little bit about that point you made about the importance of having dense vertical development around metro stations, explain to our listeners why that's important.

Phyllis Randall:

So I believe that you should always place density around mass transit. And that mass transit could be rail, it could be a Metro station, it could be a very active bus station. But what that means is a couple things. One, when you have a healthy transit system, you can have less cars. So of course it's less cars on the road, less congestion, less greenhouse gas emissions, all those things. But you also want to build neighborhoods that are mixed-use communities so that in one community, people can learn, work, play, live, all those things.

Robert McCartney:

As Randall said, the Silver Line's impending arrival has increased housing prices in Loudoun. This is a chronic problem regionwide. The region's leaders have identified the need for middle- and lower- income people, marginalized communities, to have better access to transit. But as soon as the transit shows up, housing prices rise. Local governments are committed in principle to increase the availability of affordable housing, especially around mass transit. But the price tag is huge, the need is in the many billions of dollars, yet local governments so far have only committed tens of millions. Or in the District, hundreds of millions of dollars. And many are citing disruptions in progress due to COVID-19, I asked the Chair what the solution was.

Phyllis Randall:

I do not believe that any one or two entities, including governmental entities, can do this alone. And I don't think we should try to do this alone. I believe there's a place for the faith community, I believe there's a place for the nonprofit community, I definitely believe there's a place for the business community to be part of this, for the federal government, for the state and local government. It has to be an all endeavor because the cost of land around mass transit is going to go up.

Robert McCartney:

Adding housing, affordable to middle- and low- income families often draws some political objections from people who say it will change their neighborhoods. Some of it can get pretty ugly.

Phyllis Randall:

There's always a misnomer of what affordable housing is. I remember being at a town hall and a man said to me, "If we have affordable homes, I want everyone in there to be drug tested and have a background check." And I bristled at that; I couldn't believe that statement. Their objections now were, it's going to cost too much, who's it going to bring to the county? Is it going to bring people who shouldn't be there? Which is again, when we talk about accessible, affordable housing in Loudoun, we're talking about the very firefighter who's coming to your house on the day that you're most in need. That is who lives in those houses. The very teacher that is taking care of your precious little daughter, that's the very person who needs this housing.

Robert McCartney:

Before we finish, I need to ask you about the big problem that Metro has recently had with some of its rail cars. General manager, Paul Wiedefeld, ordered a temporary but significant reduction in service in October after suspending the use of the majority of cars owing to the risk of derailment. Given that Loudoun is making such a big bet on Metro, does this raise any concerns for you?

Phyllis Randall:

I think it's a really valid question. So first of all, I think it's important to say that Paul Wiedefeld and the Metro board immediately handled these issues. They were very transparent to what happened, they took the rail cars off, they shut some lines down so that they can get on top of it right away. Part of what's happened with Metro for years is that the infrastructure to Metro has not been kept up to where it should be. We all know that the money hasn't been there, and so the entire system will not be fixed all at once. But I will say Paul Wiedefeld is working to address these issues, be transparent in the addressing of them, and handling them. And so it's a big system and we are all committed to getting it right.

Robert McCartney:

Now, let's talk about a different kind of high capacity transit service under construction on the other side of the Potomac, that's the Purple Line in suburban Maryland. Its name makes it sound like a Metro rail line, but the Purple Line is light rail rather than heavy rail. That means it's basically a trolley rather than a subway. And instead of expanding into an outer suburb as the Silver Line is doing in Loudoun, it's running through long-established, close-in suburban neighborhoods. So instead of being solely a spur for brand new development, it aims to revive communities that have lagged economically. I talked to Sheila Somashekhar, Director of the Purple Line Corridor Coalition, which comprises government, business, and nonprofit groups working collaboratively toward that vision. So why don't you start by reminding people what the Purple Line is and where it's going to run.

Sheila Somashekhar:

Sure, yeah. The Purple Line is a planned light rail project, it's a 16-mile light rail that's going to connect New Carrollton on the east end in Prince George's County with Bethesda in Montgomery County on the west end. It's a first east-west rail connection cutting entirely through the Washington, D.C. suburbs.

Robert McCartney:

Sheila mentioned how diverse this corridor is both economically and racially. At one end, Bethesda and Chevy Chase have a median income of about $140,000 a year. But it also stretches through lower income communities like Langley Park and Riverdale. A lot of immigrants live along the corridor, especially from Latin America and Africa, as well as African Americans and other underrepresented communities.

Sheila Somashekhar:

Those areas are not traditionally desirable places for development and investment. So the expectation is that the Purple Line is going to change that picture a little bit, it's going to bring growth and investment, it's going to bring a new kind of interest in places that have historically been left behind by investment. We know that transit investments can result in displacement of low income communities of color. And our work really is intended to make sure that people can stay and benefit from the Purple Line. So we have a focus on affordable housing preservation and growth, small business preservation and growth, workforce development, and broadly vibrant and sustainable communities.

Robert McCartney:

Somashekhar said the coalition is working to build or preserve 17,000 housing units along the Purple Line corridor that would be affordable to households earning less than 60 percent of area median income, which is about $70,000 a year. I asked her how the coalition would raise the money to finance that project.

Sheila Somashekhar:

Raising capital is a huge focus. The PLCC does have a dedicated capital pool that currently is at about $10 million. And that's flexible capital that can be combined with other sorts of capital that are out there to make these projects financially viable. So we have partners that include nonprofit advocates, housing developers, lenders, property owners, community organizers that are really focused on driving our housing action plan.

Robert McCartney:

So paint a picture for us of what you hope these communities along the Purple Line are going to look like, say in 10 years.

Sheila Somashekhar:

So in 10 years, the Purple Line will definitely be up and running. The vision that I'm hoping for and that I think we're all working towards and that I think is very much possible is you continue to have really diverse communities where people have choice of housing at all income levels. You've got density near the transit nodes, you're maximizing what an amazing amenity the Purple Line will be in terms of the ability to get around. And you have really incredible legacy businesses that have been around for decades already and that they continue to stay in these communities. We really see the Purple Line as a huge opportunity to drive equitable growth, coupled with a sense of stability for lots of different kinds of communities along the line.

Robert McCartney:

Regional planners and officials at COG say focusing growth and development around 225 high capacity transit station areas across the region is one way to work toward creating more transit-oriented communities. Now let's take a minute to look at some of the data. For that, I turned to Kanti Srikanth, Deputy Executive Director for Metropolitan Planning at COG.

Kanti Srikanth:

While we look at the region as a whole, we may want to focus on these station areas, these 225 that are currently planned. And it's not a large area, it's only 10% of the region's land area. But it has the potential to advance multiple regional priorities and goals. It's almost like in an acupuncture chart, these station areas are the pressure points.

Robert McCartney:

How much of the region's future population growth is targeted for high capacity transit station areas or HCTs?

Kanti Srikanth:

For planners, they love numbers. The region, for example, currently has about 2.1 million households and about 5.7 million people. And there are about 3.4 million jobs in our region. Thirty-eight percent of this population and 66 percent of these jobs are already around high capacity transit station areas. But the region is forecasting, in the next 10 years, we are going to add 400,000 jobs and nearly 600,000 more people by 2030. And the current plans or expectation is that 40 percent of this population growth and over 50 percent of the job growth will happen around these high-capacity transit station areas. And that is why we need to focus on them to be prepared to accommodate that growth in this area.

Robert McCartney:

Well, I think a lot of our listeners will hear 600,000 more people coming to the region by 2030 and they're going to think, "Oh, my heavens, the traffic is going to just get even worse than it has been."

Kanti Srikanth:

And how do we accommodate that? One of the ways is we want to reduce the dependence on personal automobile travel, particularly single occupant travel. The region collectively has invested tens of billions of dollars building an excellent transit network. The COG Board endorsing the high-capacity transit station area growth as a planning priority helps because then it focuses everybody's efforts. Whether you are making a transportation investment, whether you are making a decision where to put a commercial enterprise, or whether you are making a decision on where to build some housing stock, where all of us in the public and private sector, can keep this as our focus and collectively and collaboratively work to make it happen.

Robert McCartney:

Now, we come back to Congress Heights, a community in Ward 8 in Southeast DC, East of the Anacostia River. The neighborhood around the Congress Heights Metro station, which is on the Green Line, has about 8,000 households. More than nine out of 10 residents are African Americans and about 40 percent live in poverty compared to 18 percent in the District as a whole. Nearly half of households don't have access to a car, so they're especially dependent on Metrorail and bus lines. But change is coming to Congress Heights with the ambitious development plans for the campus around St. Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital. Valecia Wilson is a Senior Neighborhood Planner for the DC Office of Planning, responsible for Ward 7 and 8.

Valecia Wilson:

So with St Elizabeth's, that's a whole new community that's being developed. And there are already new residents there and there are certainly more to come as the parcels are developed one by one.

Robert McCartney:

Wilson is helping to oversee a project to build connections between the new development at St. Elizabeth's transit and the communities of longtime residents right next door. A top priority is adding more lighting along streets and public places to make it easier to walk and discourage crime. Other changes are planned as well.

Valecia Wilson:

The physical improvements include lighting, also, where do we need benches? There are whole streets that don't have any relief for pedestrians. There are a lot of seniors in the community that need to get around, we'll be looking at where we need more shade. We know that from our research that in Ward 8 and this area in particular pulls a lot of the heat island challenges. More long term, we are trying to identify places where connections are not being made, so south of Alabama Avenue, there are blocks that are not connected to each other, streets that dead end. And those create real barriers for residents trying to walk to get around the community and get through the community. So long term, we're looking at where can we make these street connections?

Robert McCartney:

Wilson's office this year received a $60,000 grant from the Council of Governments that will help fund a study of how to improve pedestrian access to four major community destinations.

Valecia Wilson:

Those include the current site of the Congress Height's Rec Center, but it's being redeveloped. It'll be even more of a destination within the next few years, the Martin Luther king Junior Avenue economic corridor, the giant grocery store and surrounding shopping center, and then also the Metro station itself, which is adjacent to where the new library for Congress Heights will be developed. We know development's going to come, it's almost a guarantee. St. Elizabeth is going to look completely different over the coming years, and we know that's going to happen, and that's been planned for. But what has not been planned for is, how do residents who are here and have been here, who have been keeping the community vibrant and alive all these years, how do they benefit from all this investment?

Robert McCartney:

Now it's time for me to share some of my own thoughts on this subject.

Our region has a choice about how to handle the steady growth in our population. In the past, we pushed out relentlessly from the region’s center, going deeper into the suburbs with new developments and new roads. The result was suburban sprawl, which has meant more driving, more pollution, and more gridlock on the highways. For some time now, elected officials have been promoting an alternative strategy of centering the growth around mass transit. That means increasing density along those lines, including by adding apartment buildings and townhouses instead of single family housing. More recently, elected officials also have increased the emphasis on achieving this development in a way that adds or preserves affordable housing and protects small businesses. It's the right strategy and has broad support, but it faces two major barriers.

One is the force of the marketplace. Money flows to areas with good transportation options, which drives up housing and other costs and drives away lower income people. Local governments can counteract that to some extent with housing subsidies. But as we've seen, they can't do it alone, the business and nonprofit sectors need to contribute, too. The second barrier is resistance to different housing types in traditionally single family neighborhoods. Many don't want to see multi-family buildings added to their neighborhoods, even if that's what makes the most sense along mass transit lines.

Some people don't want affordable housing in their neighborhoods because they think it will attract lower income people or people of color. Yes, using HCTs as a planning tool will help the region to prioritize underserved communities. But people of goodwill, fellow residents, will at the same time need to push back relentlessly against bigotry if we are to have the diverse transit-oriented communities that serve so many regional goals.

We hope you enjoyed this episode. We welcome your comments, please send them to thinkregionally@mwcog.org. This podcast is produced by Megan Goodman and Janelle Parkman at COG. Until next month, this is your host, Robert McCartney urging everyone to think regionally.