Living in Georgetown Could Be Cheaper than the Suburbs

Though Georgetown does not have a metro stop, its density and access to bus routes, actually make it a more affordable place to live than some suburban or less dense areas in the region.

The D.C. Office of Planning (OP), in cooperation with the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), has released H+T in DC: Housing + Transportation Affordability in Washington, DC, a report that investigates how neighborhood characteristics such as proximity to jobs and access to transit vary across the region and affect household transportation costs.

“Everyone knows that the cost of housing varies across neighborhoods throughout the region,” said OP Director Harriet Tregoning in a news release. “But fewer people recognize the extent to which transportation costs vary by location and affect real affordability.”

According to the study, Georgetown continues to have very high housing costs, accounting for 29 to 53 percent of income in sections of the neighborhood. Traditionally, housing is considered affordable when the costs consume no more than 30 percent of household income.

But transportation costs take up only 12 to 15 percent of household income in Georgetown.

If you take into account both cost of housing and transportation, the sweet spot for affordability according to the CNT index is a combined total that is less than 45 percent of household income.

By that standard at least one section of Georgetown's east village is deemed affordable.

The CNT study offers a map that breaks the region into block groups. In Georgetown one block group north of M Street, east of 28th Street and south of Q Street, is considered affordable. Here housing costs are 29 percent of income and transportation costs 12 percent, for a total of 41 percent of income

Notably this area is part of Georgetown that is closest to a metro station, with Dupont Circle in relative walking distance.

The study demonstrates that when transportation is factored in, “the savings can be great enough to make up for the relatively higher costs of housing in some parts of the District” said Mayor Vincent Gray in a press release.

One factor here that might actually mean that more of Georgetown is  affordable than the study suggests is that the index holds household income constant at $62,216 for the entire region. The average household income in Georgetown is almost twice that amount at approximately $120,000, according to the 2009 American Community Survey.

The D.C. study is based on CNT’s Housing + Transportation (H+T®) Affordability Index (http://htaindex.cnt.org/), which uses U.S. Census data to examine how neighborhood and household characteristics affect transportation costs such as car ownership and transit use.