#homelesss

[T]here is a jobs/housing imbalance problem. Illustration of a scale with a suburban house on one end, and urban developers on the other Some critics of the claim that the US has a housing shortage point out that, at least in this century, housing starts have kept up with population growth. Even if true, that doesn’t mean that housing is being produced in the best places. The jobs/housing imbalance problem is that the location of jobs and the location of new and existing residential housing is deeply out of sync. We are not building enough housing in the same places or near the same places where job creation is strongest. This used to be called the “spatial mismatch,” a term coined to describe the pattern between where Black Americans reside and where jobs and job growth appeared most robust. But this has become a more general phenomenon, where housing production is often strongly inhibited in places where new jobs are being created at the fastest clip, pushing new housing starts further away from job centers. One consequence of this problem has been the rise of the so-called "super-commuter," an ever-growing fraction of workers who have to commute unhealthy distances and spend too much time to reach their jobs. [T]here is a related problem of the jobs/housing fit. It is not enough to ensure that there are enough new housing units to serve new workers lured by new jobs, but that the type of housing and the cost of housing is tailored to serve the jobs that are being created. So, for example, it does not help to build ample five-bedroom homes for empty-nest seniors or one-bedroom or studio housing units for lower-income wage workers heading families with several children. Housing needs to be located proximate to jobs, but that housing must also match as closely as possible in form and price the needs and of those workers.