The Housing Bomb: Why Our Addiction to Houses Is Destroying the Environment and Threatening Our Society

7. Large-Scale Strategies for Defusing the Housing Bomb

C h a p t e r s e v e n Large-scale strategies for Defusing the Housing Bomb State governments, other regional governments, nations, and even the international community have a critical role to play when it comes to defusing the housing bomb. Many issues associated with where housing goes on the landscape (e.g., health, or social justice) traditionally fall outside the purview of local governments. Communities with good intentions to coordinate smart growth are often stymied in their efforts by regional development patterns beyond their control, including white flight and a race to the bottom where lax communities focus primarily on the short-term profits of attracting development and tax dollars.1 Also, the aggregated results of smart growth planned at the community level do not necessarily combine to protect watersheds, airsheds, habitat connectivity, viable transportation networks, or a stable climate. The regional patterns resulting from community-planned smart growth may not be very smart when they are considered at a regional level. Celebration Florida provides a great example of this phenomenon. This master-planned community was designed using new-urbanism principles, but it was located in one of the last wildlife corridors connecting north and south Florida. When the few remaining open spaces between Orlando and Tampa are gone, terrestrial wildlife will find south Florida sealed off from the rest of the continental United States.2 Households have become a huge resource sink. Even before they are built, homes and subdivisions start sucking in energy and spewing out emissions, some of which have been linked directly to anthropogenic (change related to or resulting from the influence of humans on nature) aspects of climate change, primarily from CO2 , and others that are connected with more immediate health effects (e.g., sulfur and nitrogen oxides). Changes in lifestyles, in home construction, and in municipal planning can contribute to energy conservation, but to go further, we need to switch to low-carbon energy 144 The Housing Bomb sources. Although much of our energy use occurs at the level of individual buildings and structures, the options available to their owners and to communities are strongly influenced by state and regional policies. Further, state and regional energy policies are linked to national and international contexts. Emerging energy technologies in the United States are funneled into subnational state energy systems that are, in turn, embedded in national and global energy systems. State and Regional Solutions States have enormous economic incentives to promote both more sustainable distributions of housing, and more sustainable forms of transportation to link housing with workplaces and amenities. The most obvious incentives are reducing health-care costs and increasing economic competitiveness. States share the costs associated with Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program with the federal government. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers (www.nasbo.org), those costs had climbed to $130 billion a year in 2010. The $130 billion constitutes 13% of the total for state budgets, less than that allocated for education, but double any other spending category. Further, while education costs for states (but not families) have remained stable for over 20 years, states’ health-care expenditures have been climbing, due to both increasing costs per person and increasing enrollment. Schools provide a great example of why states need to promote the complete -streets movement (www.completestreets.org). The basic idea behind complete streets is designing and operating streets to promote their safe use by pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and transit users of all ages. Between 1970 and 2000, the percentage of children walking or biking to school at least one day a week fell from nearly half (48%) to less than 15%.3 The most important barrier to children walking to school was distance; the next was traffic. Nonetheless, nearly half of the children who still live within a mile of their schools are active travelers (as opposed to passive riders), walking or bicycling to school. The southern United States, however, lags about 20% behind other regions of the country in terms of active travel to school. Promoting active leisure (e.g., sports) is no substitute for designing landscapes where active travel to and from school, work, and other daily destinations is possible. The health benefits of bicycling to work have been shown to reduce mortality risks by 40%, even after accounting for leisure-time physical activity and other demographic variables.4 Large-Scale Strategies for Defusing the...