Ok, probably not. But you’ll spend less on transportation in Queen Anne.
There was a great post on Grist today about affordability. The standard idea of affordable housing ignores the cost of a commute, which makes the suburbs look quite favorable. However, Chicago’s Center for Neighborhood Technology has come up with a great new tool called Abogo that estimates your transportation costs as quickly as you can use Google Maps. Read the whole article for details, or go straight to the tool to find out the average monthly transportation costs for your area here.
When CNT analyzed 337 metro areas that include 80 percent of the nation’s population, it found that 69 percent of neighborhoods are considered affordable under the conventional definition. But just 39 percent are affordable under the 45 percent H+T standard.
That’s right, only 39% of neighborhoods are affordable, thanks to the cost of our cars.
Wow, Seattle fairs poorly compared to East Coast cities such as NY and Boston.
Looking at the model it appears they just use VMT and then factor in depreciation, fuel and maintenance. Opps, car insurance is way more expensive in dense areas:
http://www.carinsurancerates.com/ask/general/541-why-do-car-insurance-rates-fluctuate-by-zip-code.html
But the big flaw in this “model” is that it has no personal inputs like miles to YOUR job. It’s like trying to predict your cost of health care based on census data and zip code. The average is pretty meaningless.
[Bernie] That page is talking about car insurance being more expensive in metro areas than, say, farm communities. I just punched 5 different zip codes into the Progressive Insurance website, and it came back with 5 identical quotes (Queen Anne, Redmond, Bothell, Federal Way, and North Bend all came back with $366/6 mo with my info).
You’re right about it not being specific. But that’s exactly the problem it’s trying to solve. How much a month do you spend on transportation? I bet you have no idea, and it would be very difficult to calculate (you’d have to keep track of mileage, tickets, gas, insurance, depreciation, maintenance…). Using an average number is very useful for general studies or to help you decide where to move.
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